


The Virulent

by fadeverb



Category: Sunless Sea
Genre: Canon-Typical Horror, Choose Your Own Adventure, Epistolary, F/F, Gen, Possible Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 65
Words: 34,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The <em>Virulent</em> leaves the docks of London with a new captain at its helm: a woman seeking fame, fortune, and adventure on the Unterzee. The zee will always provide opportunities, but not every captain knows how to navigate between the shoals of caution and ambition to find what she seeks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [csoru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/csoru/gifts).



> This is written as a classic Choose Your Own Adventure system. Don't read the chapters straight through! The story is designed to be read in a particular order based on the choices you make. Many chapters will give you a choice, and instructions on which chapter to jump to next based on your decision. [Decisions and instructions will be in brackets, like this.] Please use the navigation by chapter menu to move between chapters, to avoid accidentally seeing spoilers for story paths.
> 
> If you would rather read this as a standard story without choices, a transcript covering one possible playthrough can be found at [The Virulent Transcript](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5464982/chapters/12633458).

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

February 1st, 1888

"A new month is a new beginning," says my employer, when he wishes to encourage us towards greater efforts on his behalf. His account book tallies up our labors upon the zee, yet scarcely a spare Echo makes its way into our hands at month's end. All the same, he has taught me a valuable lesson. With this new month, I shall make a new beginning. A greater beginning than he has imagined, hunched over his books of accounts and logs from our tedious excursions between Fallen London and Venderbight. No more shall I fill my ship with the bandaged rot and dusty breath of the near dead.

"My ship," I write, as if any of the vessels I zailed upon between those ports could truly be called my own. Not the first rusting steamer that I crept aboard in secret, and where I paid for my board in scrubbing those foul decks. Not the tedious ship whose spotless, impersonal decks I last set foot on yesterday, and whose decks I will never tread again, though all aboard called me captain. No, _my_ ship is the sweet old Virulent, and she will bear me across the darkling zee to places I have never seen. She will bring me fame and fortune. Oh, how my employer will regret this month's beginning, when he sees what I have made of myself, unfettered by his bony hands! A new month, a new voyage, a new course of employment. A new book of blank pages, to keep under lock and key in my own cabin, while the crew may look in satisfaction on the quite ordinary official log I have set by the wheel.

A new debt to a certain hard-eyed woman in an elegant townhouse, who says she has no need of a ship anymore, and no heir upon which to bestow it. Very well. I will prove myself as much an heir to that canny old captain as any true daughter of hers could have been, and then what shall they all say?

#

[Continue to Chapter 2.]


	2. Chapter 2

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

Wolfstack Docks! A charming location to be sure, though you ought to keep a close eye upon your possessions as you tour these quaint and smoke-filled environs. The locally termed "zailors" upon the underworld's "zee" frequent these parts, and with the expenditure of very little coin at one of the dockside taverns, you may find yourself entertained with an implausible tale of adventure out in that glimmering darkness. (Refer to the chapter on places of refreshment, under the section "Authentic Local Drinks", for a list of the most appropriate taverns.) If you venture out to where the coal-burning ships stand silent on the water, you will see all manner of ports advertised for their locations. Trade, tours, and terrifying scientific expeditions set out from this place, and you might join a ship for any such adventure!

Of course, we recommend that you confine yourself to admiring the ships, and taking on a few stories of the zee...

#

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Restocked supplies and fuel. Took on a new commission to fund the next expedition.

#

[Choose one of the expeditions below to continue the story.]

* Delivery to Mount Palmerston - [Go to Chapter 17]  
* Expedition to the north - [Go to Chapter 3]  
* Sea monster research - [Go to Chapter 55]  
* The Admirality's request - [Go to Chapter 44]  
* Tea for Port Carnelian - [Go to Chapter 28]

[Choose the following only if you have taken all of the commissions above without reaching an End.]

* A satisfying conclusion. [Go to Chapter 13]


	3. Chapter 3

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

...And having concluded that business, I took a hackney to the address listed in a peculiar advertisement I discovered in the morning's paper. I would include the clipping here, but for the incident with some wretched urchin as I exited the coach. As best I remember, it said something like this:

_Fame! Fortune! Knowledge! We seek the bravest of all zee captains for an expedition to a place of some peril and vast opportunity. Only those with sturdy constitutions need apply. Payment commensurate with experience._

After divesting myself of troublesome children and their sticky fingers, I rapped sharply on the door matching the address I had been given. A footman led me to a sort of gentlemen's club, but one holding no one I would account a gentleman. Oh, surely some of them were born of families noble or wealthy enough to call themselves such, but they were all wild about the eyes, whether lean or portly or shaking with frailty from a couch.

Some nonsense ensued for a moment: these so-called gentlemen of science had expected a man, when asking for a zee captain of sturdy constitution. The footman soon cleaned away the debris of my demonstration of constitution and we got down to business. These mad men want a captain to take them to Whither, where they propose to undertake some sort of experiment: and if that goes well, then to the Avid Horizon, for further research. They offer a fee that covers the basic cost of the travel handily enough, though little beyond that. Promises of fame if their research at the Avid Horizon is published in scientific journals; promises of fortune if they should discover what they seek there, though they offer no details on whether they seek knowledge or more physical treasure, or how it might be converted to fortune. I see already that I might make the easiest profit by taking them to Whither, seeing their first experiment fail, and returning them home immediately.

Regardless, I have some interest in the places they seek. I will see the old captain in her townhouse, and ask her for the locations I have no charts for myself. She will no doubt give me cryptic hints, but those will suffice. What difference can landsmen such as these tell between sailing directly for a port, and sailing near enough to its location to spot its lights in the distance, when the captain shows enough confidence in her heading?

#

[Go to Chapter 4]


	4. Chapter 4

_From the journal of the mad scientist's daughter_

I was so _very_ concerned for a moment when I stepped onto the ship, with all those zailors bustling about, and all of Papa's friends chattering on as they do about shrines and science. They are like a flock of night-hens, sometimes, and I do fear Papa forgets about me, except for when he can't find his instruments or has neglected to take notes on the latest experiment, and must turn to me for such things. I stood there on the deck without the slightest idea of where to turn, or whether I looked as much the wide-eyed figurehead (instead of a proper scientist, and perhaps a bit of an adventuress?) as I feared.

But then one of the zailors took me by the elbow--more respectfully than it sounds when I write it so, for sure!--and she told me that the captain had already arranged for me to share her cabin, on seeing me in the approaching group, since Papa had neglected to tell her that one of those in his count was not yet another Scientifick Man, as he likes to put it, and had certainly not--this part was implied, not stated, but I am quite sure it is true--had certainly not paid for me to have my own cabin. There was a bit of confusion, for I thought the zailor meant I would share a cabin with one of her colleagues, but no, I'm to be in the captain's cabin, myself!

That is where I am writing this now, and it is the tidiest little room that could be imagined. There is a table that folds down on one side, and a bed that folds down on the other, and no room to walk between the two when both are set out: one simply sits on the bed to write at the table, for all the other space is taken up with chests and such. A very snug place, to be sure, and perhaps leading one to uneasy thoughts of closets, were it not so brightly lit, and with a nice little port looking out across the zee. Right now it looks out only over the docks, but we will set out very soon.

I have met the captain herself! Or perhaps I should say the Captain Herself, for at zee the captain of a ship is like Queen and God and Judge to all aboard. She stood very tall and imposing in front of me, even with her head ducked for the low ceiling of the cabin, like a veritable titan herself! But she spoke kindly enough, and told me that I might have her bed as my own, and she will lie on the table, with pillows and blankets and such. For, she said, it is not the least comfortable bed she has had, and if she put me there, I might well slide off the table onto her in the middle of the night, when the zee heaves with some unusual swell. As a zailor since a very tender age, she will have no such trouble maintaining her balance.

I had no choice but to accept, but I am determined to earn my zee-legs, as they call the acclimation to the movement of ships, and trade places with her again. It is not right to take a bed from the Captain Herself, however kindly she offers, when Papa has put her in such an awkward position. And--

Oh, there he is, calling. He has surely lost track of where the zailors stored his luggage, and wants some instrument or journal. I must go.

#

[Go to Chapter 5]


	5. Chapter 5

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Reached Whither on the 8th, as expected. Calm seas throughout. Passengers requested aid in their work on shore, and were sent an accompanying party of two zailors and the captain.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_   
_(Damaged portions have been redacted and marked accordingly)_

[...] bloody bats, and touch and go that was for a moment, given the hull damage. My first mate claims it wasn't the zailor's fault, given her religious leanings, but I say that if a zailor wants to build a shrine to Salt, she very well ought [...] in Whither at last. Left most of the crew and my chief engineer trying to patch things back together while escorting these d--n scientists to where they'll do their work.

The only one of the lot of them who can string a reasonable sentence together is the young woman they relegate to tidying their notes and reminding them of schedules. You would think a girl as bright and eager as she is would throw some sparks over that! But no, she passes them their spectacles and reminds them where they stored their thingamabobs, sweet as a schoolroom nanny. 

She's also the only one of them who came sidling up to me on a cold night at watch to ask if I was quite sure of our heading. Pert, but not impudent: she called me captain and dipped a little curtsey when she asked the question. "I was watching the false-stars," she said, "and I noticed, if you don't mind my bringing up such things when I'm not a zailor in the slightest myself, that we had changed course--do you call it tacking, or is that only with the sorts of ships that have sails?--off to the northwest this evening, and then only last night, we were heading northeast."

She does ramble on. Not a silly thing, though, for all her digressions. I said something about currents and shoals, and then for the rest of the watch we [...]

#

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

There is, gentle reader, no good reason for a tourist to travel all the way to Whither. It is a chilly city of few diversions, and unlikely to be worth your time. However, if you feel quite compelled to make the trip, you will soon find yourself at Anderghard Harbor, where frost creeps up the pillars of the docks as well as the shoes of the laggard traveller. The inhabitants have a quaint habit of answering questions with more questions, which can make navigation difficult. We recommend buying a map beforehand, or orienting yourself periodically by checking the slope of the streets. Downward will lead you back to the harbor, and a ship away; upward will take you eventually to the north-west of the city, where the House of the Question waits.

If you are of a particularly pious bent, we recommend avoiding this destination, as it is not friendly to tourism from those who hold to the Church...

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I do not hold to gods of the zee more or less than any other captain of reason. There are forces waiting above or below the reflecting darkness of the waves, if one is so foolish as to draw their attention, and there are nonsensical stories about them with seeds of truer stories buried within. Having come to Whither on other business, I would have left the House of the Question alone entirely. With that pack of chattering fools determined to advance on it with their instruments, I took the lead.

A captain can't send people up there and not come along. It wouldn't be right.

The snow came from the north as we labored up that hill. Labored, I say, not for the steepness of the climb, or even against the whistling wind and the cold flakes puffing to nothing when they touched us, but for all those cases the men brought with them. I set two zailors to carry what the gentlemen of science could not. Myself, I chose a trunk, and walked with one handle of it in my hand, and one in the hand of the young lady. Easy enough to carry with two. She's sturdier than she looks.

"How curious," she said, when we passed one of the salt pools. "Why is it that color?" She asked the question at more length, but that was the gist. I told her something about glowing fungus that can abide the saltiest water, and how their spores create the fizz and pop of those pools. It might be true. Read something like it in a book, once, tucked away in my cabin during a long night between Fallen London and Venderbight. If I never see another candle-lit city, it'll be too soon!

Too soon we reached the House of the Question, all the same. Frightful place. Of course it stands alone. Even the question-askers back in port can't abide its presence. All those questions they ask, and you know they don't want _answers_. That's why they keep asking: so no one can get an answer in, or find out how little _they_ know. My pair of zailors made appropriate signs towards the gods of the zee. The scientists did nothing of the sort.

Nothing of the sort, indeed. They set up all their instruments in the courtyard of the place. Salt in the beakers, chemicals in the salt, until it was fizzing nearly the same way as those salt pools. One of them tried to explain to me what they were doing, but he mumbled in his beard, and what I caught of it was nonsense. Dangerous nonsense. They wanted guidance, and not even from the priests of the gods! From a god direct, as if Salt would take their circles and potions as well as he would sacrifice.

And then, having set it all up, they left! Just left! Said that there was no point standing around when the experiment called for waiting overnight in a freeze, and they might as well all go have dinner in one of the chilly dock taverns where at least a fire waited in one of those gray stone buildings. Tired of cave-herring supplies, they said. Tired of hardtack. As if they expected much better in a place this chilly; I'd be surprised if they could find a bottle of mushroom wine for less than ten Echoes, and thirty if it's of any vintage.

"I suppose I ought to go with them," said the young lady. "To keep them out of trouble." And I told her...

#

* _...to go along, and I would catch up soon. I had plans of my own. Plans that didn't involve a journey into the completely frozen parts of the north, or a curse from the gods of the zee._ [Sabotage the experiment. Go to Chapter 6.]

* _...that the gentlemen could bloody well mind themselves, with nothing more dangerous than pickles in their chosen dining place. We ought to see that no one came to upset the instruments, when they had set everything up in a public place, if one not well traveled._ [Watch the experiment. Go to Chapter 7.]


	6. Chapter 6

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Returned to Fallen London. One barrel of oil in excess of plans consumed in outpacing a swarm of aggressive bats. Passengers debarked.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Those gentlemen of science spent the entire trip back arguing about their experiment and its failure. I wished more than once for thicker cabin walls, for all that the ship would spend more fuel to carry the weight. I carried back a few barrels of beer for the more peculiar connoisseurs of Fallen London, and nothing else of interest. What a useless port of call, for fame or fortune! Still, better than freezing to death on a god-cursed iceberg of the north.

The young lady has been nearly as chill as the port we left. Morose, I think, for the failure of the expedition. "It will be five years or more," she said, "before another chance, with what it took to raise the funds for this one. Five years of those meetings, helping serve the wine and taking the minutes for their discussion..." She kept watching the northern horizon, though there was nothing to see but the reflection of our own lights across the water, and those eyeless dolphins that slip through the wake on calm nights. "I thought we had discovered something grand. Maybe we were mistaken."

It is her own business if she chooses to attach herself to such people. We all make our own way in the world, as we care to. And she suspects nothing of what I did. Or if she suspects, she knows I did it for the good of us all. Nothing but ice and disaster waited for the end of the journey her father proposed.

#

_From the journal of the mad scientist's daughter_

...and then asked me if I wanted to stay aboard, as a ship's doctor. A doctor, though I haven't any proper training in medicine, only naturalism, and what in the world would Papa do without me, with no one to remind him to eat and sleep, no idea where he last left his tools or notes, and all his notes in disarray, well, I just don't know! And so of course I said no, though I could hardly bear to do it, and...look, now I'm crying again. This page will be such a mess. Every time I look up from the desk in my nice little room, where the bed rests a few yards from the window and one can walk around on rugs without bumping elbows or knees on anything, with a cheery gas-fire in the hearth, and the whole city lit up outside like a solid, steady place that would never desert me or drown me or get me lost, I just want to cry again, though I ought to be happy. Fallen London is home, after all, and Papa does need me.

What would I do on a ship? I never did manage to get my zee legs. The one time I insisted on taking the table, I fell right into the captain's bunk, in the middle of the night, and oh. Oh, all my ink is liable to run. I'm not a doctor, in any case, not even a proper naturalist, and imagine me as a zailor. Trying to manage boilers and swabbing decks and all those things zailors do. It's really for the best.

#

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	7. Chapter 7

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Reached Codex. Passengers completed their business in two days. One zailor lost to the monks.

#

_From the journal of the mad scientist's daughter_

It's not that I mean to complain, because sailing east is dreadfully exciting, with the way the false-stars change overhead, and how much the captain has told me about the zee and the amazing places she's been, or even the thrill of finally seeing a glimmer ahead as it resolves slowly into a place, and then a Place, where we'll be able to continue the experiment, but oh, I'm so dreadfully cold all the time now! I can't even take notes on the deck, as the ink develops ice crystals. It's inside or nothing, and I am so grateful that the captain doesn't mind the way I've rather commandeered her whole cabin for notes. I suppose she won't mind a few extra minutes taken for my journal, either.

There's a dreadful row going on overhead just now. It makes it very hard to focus on writing, but I am resolved to stay out of it entirely, for Papa will carry the day or won't, and pushing my nose in won't help him in the slightest. So let's never mind that. Dreadful rows among gentlemen of science happen every other day, while this is the first time I've ever been this far from home, or to Codex in particular.

It's a strange place. It's not so strange in weather, really, after Whither, though it's even colder, but snow and ice look about the same whether they're falling on gray stone or the ship's deck or across the wooly hats all the zailors seem to have pulled out of storage in the last week. But the people here! You would think that maybe with visitors coming and going, there would be some mute hermits, like a sort of tourist attraction, and then normal people who speak handling all the business down by the docks. But it's all silent men and women making strange gestures, and no business done at all. Even the monkeys, which I found quite charming on my first sight of them, all that fur and those wrinkled little faces speckled with snow, seem quite foul-tempered, and I am sure that if they could speak, they wouldn't either. I'm glad we're not staying here very long. Even if I'm not quite sure where we're off to next.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Blast all scientists and their blasted instruments! Codex is a miserable enough port as it is, but I thought that I could leave these men to their nonsense while I compiled a report for the Admirality. What the Admirality will make of my writing on the hand gestures of these frozen fools I can never tell, but that's not my problem. What is my problem is that these scientists have had a falling out that complicates the entire expedition, and have somehow in the process persuaded one of my zailors to take up a life of silent contemplation on this island.

I tried to persuade the woman otherwise, but she was quite emphatic. Some of those hand gestures were more appropriate to the Wolfstack Docks than any sort of mystical habitation.

The wildest-eyed of them all has been pointing at his instruments and shouting for the last hour. I can hear him quite clearly from here in the pilot house, where I have retreated for a moment of peace, if certainly not one of quiet. "The spiritual energies have been registered on the electro-magnetic meter!" he is shouting, by which he likely means that absurd instrument of magnet, bell, and some sort of wired up hammer. It gongs irregularly. Perhaps that's what drove my zailor to quieter shores.

They are not growing any quieter. I will see what it is they've decided.

Back. The bell is even worse from a yard away. They have expressed to me that half of them believe their expedition has now been concluded, because Codex has been revealed as the source of the "spiritual energy" they were seeking, and they now wish to return immediately to Fallen London and begin giving talks on the results. The other half believe that their instruments have proven the source of this energy lies at the Avid Horizon, and wish to continue onward to their original hoped-for destination.

I believe that I have a growing headache. All the frailest, most frothing gentlemen want to proceed, and the solid, sensible ones want to turn back. The only outlier here is the young lady, who exited our shared cabin long enough to bring her father a cup of tea and express an interest in seeing the true horizon of the north at last. She deserves better than this lot, regardless. I told the squabbling group quite firmly that...

#

* _...they have their data, and we have all had enough of the cold._ [Turn back towards Fallen London. Go to Chapter 8.]  
* _...they might as well see this business through, rather than changing their minds at every stiff wind._ [Continue towards the Avid Horizon. Go to Chapter 9.]


	8. Chapter 8

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Rough seas while passing Hunter's Point. Returned to Fallen London. Passengers debarked.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I'm not sorry to see the last of those men, though they say they'll ask for me again on their next expedition. If they manage such a thing! The young lady says it'll be five years or more before they take another such trip, given publication schedules and funding and other such academic nonsense I have no ear for. I suppose they were no worse than tomb colonists, in the end. Louder. Less prone to falling apart. Equally strange.

The young lady has left me with her address, and promises correspondence. Letters she'll have in return, if letters are what she sends me, though I would've offered her a more interesting exchange. She has set her heart on the university. As if she could learn half as much from books and dusty lecture halls as she could have at zee! But not everyone hears its call, or wakes in the morning with the taste of salt lingering on their teeth.

Regardless, I've turned a tidy profit, and gained a little fame thereby, for whatever good fame among those madmen will do me. I'll take an evening or two on shore, and then it's off again, to a more fortunate port.

#

_From the journal of the mad scientist's daughter_

I felt it in Whither, didn't I? It was there in Codex, wasn't it? I've been mulling this over the whole trip back, and the further I turn from the north, the more certain I am. There was something there. Something that spoke to me, not in words, but in waves and snow and the glimmer of false-stars reflecting on the dark zee water, in the murmur of zailors and the call of the captain's orders.

I wish I could have explained it to her, but she would think me mad, or superstitious, wouldn't she? Captains are the sort of people who think of--oh, ships and sails and sealing wax, wasn't it? Or boilers and boats and buttons, something like that, I haven't had time for poetry in ages, and I don't expect to have much time for it soon. I must learn more, so that the next time I turn north, I'll be ready for what's there. Papa will understand, and he'll manage without me, so long as he isn't such a bother that the maid quits on him again. I must go to the university and stuff my head with knowledge until it's time for the next expedition. This time I went along like some sort of child, but next time, oh, maybe I should say, I'll have stuffed my heart or veins with the knowledge, because next time that I find that _something_ , that maybe _someone_ of the north, I'll be ready to listen properly.

I'm sure it will wait for me. It is so very old, and it has waited so very long, beneath the ice.

#

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	9. Chapter 9

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

False-stars above, and false-stars below. In the depth of the night I stood alone at the ship's railing, watching the sky. Or watching the zee. For the space of a heartbeat, the world was flipped, and we were not _below_ but _above_ , as if we had been snatched up into heaven and could only gaze down from our silent vessels across the night sky below us.

Then the zailor on watch scuffed her foot across the deck, and that sound, that ordinary human sound from the world of shoes and people who have to wear them, pulled me right back to where I was. Went to stand beside her, and we talked of home for half an hour. Newspapers, restaurants, the carnival. Lamps that stand firm in the ground, rather than moving forward at the prow of a ship, illuminating the vast and endless zee.

But it's not endless, is it?

#

_From a report to the Admirality, by the Captain of the Strong Brew_

Find enclosed a record of the names entered on the pillar. Otherwise, mostly quiet. Hailed a ship moving toward the bay as we were leaving, the Virulent. Friendly words from the captain, but no information of notable strategic value. She says a group of scientists commissioned the trip, and expects return within a few days. Would have sent a boat over to examine her passengers discreetly for any of the faces you asked after, but a wind from the north made it unwise.

#

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

...or the so-called "Avid Horizon", which we take to be a myth. You will find many of those "zailors" telling their "zee stories" about the false-stars descending to the water in this place, or whispering about quests that lead up to a vast set of frozen gates with an unknown maker, through which none can pass. This charming tale is clearly a reference to the gates of Eden, and you should not more think of visiting this "horizon" of the north than you would of trying to find the Garden itself.

#

[Go to Chapter 10.]


	10. Chapter 10

_From the journal of the mad scientist's daughter_

The wind cuts through everything, here. I thought I had known cold before, but it was the kind of cold we could build barricades against, out of fur and wool and all those soft things that come from animals, as if you can set enough once-living things between yourself and the north. This cold gets in. It cuts in, and I don't know what could keep it out. My fingers are always all-but-numb, my eyes hurt when I blink, and we all go about with scarves pulled up over our noses, so even our words are half-silenced by the cold. It's so cold I can barely think!

There's no one else here. We saw a ship, on the way in, and I thought there was maybe a little settlement, with--oh, I don't know! Not a shop for selling knick-knacks and curios to tourists, no, but some government shack tracking the ins and outs, a few mad hermits (mute or otherwise), something! There's nothing here but the ice and the gates, and the docks. Who builds a harbor like this, and then leaves it be? How is it even maintained, with no one here? Maybe the ice is enough to lock it into place. But the zee let us right through, so it can't all be frozen, and anything with water lapping constantly against it degrades, over time. That's natural.

Everything here looks to be perfect and still and silent and exactly as it has always been. Even our footprints in the snow disappear within a few hours. Not with any raging storm that can change the landscape, but a soft, constant fall that buries everything. The zailors are constantly sweeping it off the decks, and mopping up the places where it melts. I am cold and damp and, oh, let me be honest with myself, I am _worried_ , but Papa doesn't notice any of this, not with his grandest experiment yet to go. I'm worried, and I can't tell him, because he'll ask for facts, proof, evidence! I don't have any to give him. Only a feeling that there's something out there, in all the silence and ice. Something that wants us here.

I don't feel welcomed. I feel lured.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Any being with sense, whether human, ape, or demon--tiger or rubbery man or faceless terror of the depths, any of them!--would know better than to pry at those gates. They tower over us, and I will not even say "like the gates of Hell," because I have it on good authority from a demon that those gates look far more mechanical than these. The gates at the Avid Horizon are unnatural, in that they look to have been produced by a living thing, or _be_ a living thing. Not produced by hands as one makes a wheelhouse door, but produced the way a shell grows about a clam. Or the way a hermit crab steals the shells of another. It is a place that does not want us. Step too close, and it even murders the breath. I caught a shard of my own exhale in a gloved hand, and watched it fail to melt.

Imagine that, inside my lungs. Imagine what it would be to touch a creation (for something must have created it) that affects us so at only proximity.

"Imagine what might happen," I told the leader of the group, or at least the most vocal of them, "if you interfered with the sorts of things man is not meant to interfere with." To which he said something particularly insulting, and attempted to pat my shoulder, and if his daughter had not been standing at his side, he would have discovered by now what a broken nose feels like when the blood running from it begins to freeze.

The young lady sits beside me as I write this. Not back on the Virulent, where we might speak privately, but on one of the packing crates, as we watch these men set up their instruments. She names them for me, whenever I look interesting. A ~~peezio~~ ~~pazeo~~ piezeometer, modified for measuring spiritual pressure, which looks to me like nothing more than a glass tube with bits attached, and which she had to spell out for me. A Tantalus Cup, which was filled with salt water, to keep it from shattering in a freeze. A ~~heliack~~ heliacal ring, and I think that is nothing but a fancy name for giant magnets which they mean to attach to the gates.

"It's not to open them," she tells me. "Papa's theory says that these gates are only the visible representation of the true gates, which are already open. If we trace this particular flow--it's like a sort of extra-salty zee current, but instead of water, with spiritual energy--then we can finally understand what the entity or effect zailors call 'Salt' actually is, where it comes from, where it's going... Oh, don't write that down, it's all nonsense. Papa could explain it much better."

We have spoken now on this matter. I find this enterprise increasingly unwise, and for all that she protests otherwise, I can see the young lady does as well. She looks to the gates not as if they are terrifying (and I find they are) but as if they are the last barrier between her and something far worse. How do none of these men notice? How can they continue laying out their instruments and taking their notes?

There is danger here. This is so certain that even writing it there plainly feels foolish. I might as well write "the zee is dark" or "tomb colonists are dusty" or "there are many bats in the Neath". Regardless, I am resolved...

#

* _...to stay here until they have finished, or given up this madness. Half my commission waits on my returning them home, which I can scarcely do if they bury themselves in snow from sheer negligence with no one watching._ [Assist the scientists. Go to Chapter 14.]  
* _...to return to the ship with the young lady for a cup of tea while these men finish their nonsense. It's none of my affair, and she'll be more comfortable in a warmer place._ [Keep your distance. Go to Chapter 15.]


	11. Chapter 11

_From the weekly edition of the Adventuring Ladies' Gazette_

And you could do far worse than to stop by one of the salons held there by the wife of Captain Z---, a lady of most unusual talents and fascinating conversation. Advertisements are posted whenever the captain is in port, and any adventuress of repute in the city flocks to the room where these two share their tales of adventure in distant lands. Thrill to the stories of monsters, exploration, and dramatic discoveries on a hundred fascinating islands throughout the zee!

If you sit down the captain herself over a glass of wine, she will surely tell you the fascinating story of how she met her wife on one of these delightful adventures. Be sure to bring smelling salts for the more faint-hearted of your friends who might overhear this tale...

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for less matrimonial conclusion to your story, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	12. Chapter 12

_From the weekly edition of the Adventuring Ladies' Gazette_

If you are able to find a suitable letter of introduction, you might even gain admission to one of the famed revels of Captain Z---, held in her mansion high on a hilltop overlooking Ladybones Road. A peculiar place to locate a house of such taste, filled with treasures of lands across the zee, you might think; but you will think otherwise if you visit her renowned gardens, full of specimens taken from several different islands, and ask the captain for her stories of how she personally visited each location.

You will have to not only procure the letter of admission, but check the newspaper reports of ships arriving and leaving carefully, for the captain still spends much of her time out on the dark waters, traveling on a frigate called the Gem of the Zee. However, should you catch her at home on a quiet evening, you may even hear the fascinating story of how she began as a humble cabin girl on a lowly steamer, and made her fortune at zee.

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less financially lush conclusion to your story, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	13. Chapter 13

_From an entry in Slowcake's Exceptionals_

Known for her adventures at zee. She has published a series of books advertised as memoirs, though not often taken as such. Her mansion stands at the listed address, acquired through proceeds from the sales of the books.

#

_From the weekly edition of the Adventuring Ladies' Gazette_

If you are fortunate enough to garner an invitation to one of the parties held in that mansion, you may find Captain Z--- herself, holding forth on the topic of her adventures at zee. You have surely read the books before, in which she lays out the perils and wonders of the Unterzee. However, nothing can compare to these same stories as told by the captain in person! And if you are particularly lucky, then slipped between the canapés and the wine, as rare as the taste of honey, you might even encounter the remarkable individual rumored to be a special friend of the Captain herself...

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less literary end to your story, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	14. Chapter 14

_From a letter between an unknown zailor and his lover_

...and on Sunday we came to the Avid Horizon, for Reasons known only to the Captain and God, and he took me and three others with pickaxes, and he said, Steady, Boys, for we are in a Forsaken Place. The Wind was fierce, I tell you that, and when next I find your Loving Embrace I will hope you will have found me a new sweater, for the Wind has cut it all to pieces, along with the Dreadful Ice.

There was a Gate most Dread and Vast, and all the ground before it blown clean, as if a Cruel Wind had cleared the space, and the Captain set us to the drifts of snow around the edges, where we found many strange Instruments of Science, and a Red Ice which you can imagine yourself as the site of a Fearful Incident, and he kept us to digging until he found a Most Sad Spectacle which I will not describe. The Nightmares still come to me, with the Drowned Man and the Eye, and I will not add Ice Dreams to your nights or mine, darling, I will not, for it would not be Right.

The Captain extracted certain Documents from that Terrible Place, and I am now back aboard the Strong Brew, and thinking only of you, for you are a sweeter thing to mind than what we found There.

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less grim fate, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	15. Chapter 15

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Gone. They are all gone. I have put enough liquor in the young lady to get her to sleep, and wish I could do the same for myself. For the entire crew, but we've left port already, and we're moving fast. To the Chapel of Lights, I've decided, though it's a slight detour compared to straight back home. None of us wants to spend the entire trip in the dark of the zee, after that. We need a place with bright lights and warm food, however strange the religion.

All those bodies, cast about on the ground like so much zee-wrack on an island's rocks. Covered by a layer of ice we could not pierce or melt with half an hour of trying and the strongest zailors at work. We heard nothing, we saw nothing, we _knew_ nothing until I returned with the young lady. Side by side, and conversational, talking about how we ought to try one more time to turn them away from the gates. I was on the verge of suggesting we meddle with the instruments, convince them their notes were enough, or simply persuade them back into the warmth and talk them around over dinner. I should have stayed. I might've seen something, _done_ something--

But they were all men, not children. Men who had been warned about gods and ice and gates. If I had stayed, would I have stopped them? Would I be another pile of what is broken and frozen? Would I be trapped within the ice, like a tomb colonist put away into storage, alive or dead or whatever they are in that place

I used the last of the wine in putting the young lady to sleep. It would be easier if she cried. She merely went quiet. Cold as Codex's shores. (Nothing could be as cold as the wind of this place, not even a woman who can't bear to cry for her father yet.) She is murmuring in her sleep. Nothing happy.

She will be unhappier still when she wakes, and discovers we have left the bodies behind. I will not have them on this ship, even if we could extract them, given enough time and labor. That place does not want us. Or perhaps it wants us too much.

#

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

An accident with frozen instruments has destroyed all of the expedition but for one. Returning home by way of the Chapel of Lights with the survivor.

#

_From the journal of the mad scientist's daughter_

I feel as if the right sort of grief will come upon me at any moment. I will cry decorously, and think wistfully of poor dear Papa, as if he has moved to the Tomb Colonies. In the proper sort of grief, I would be considering how to dye my clothes black when this ship has no dye available, and I would sit silently at meals. A good daughter would do these things.

How could he. How _could_ he. How COULD he? Didn't I warn him, and didn't the captain tell him! Didn't we all see what was happening there! Couldn't he hear it calling? Couldn't he understand that what you don't know and yet calls your name must be dangerous? How could one experiment, one paper he wanted to write, one ridiculous expedition through the cold, be more important than understanding that?

I don't know what to do without him. I've spent all my life, ever since I could put pen to paper, standing beside him and helping him, and now he's gone. Papa is _gone_. All I have left is myself, and what I choose to do with myself.

A good daughter would probably devote her life to finding a way to free him from that ice.

I'm not a very good daughter.

#

[Go to Chapter 16.]


	16. Chapter 16

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The air of London tasted too warm, at first. We drew near at noon, and all the zailors came up to the deck to stare at the lights growing nearer. To murmur about home. I found myself standing at the rail as well, if at the sort of polite distance one keeps when a captain, and looking in much the same direction. We go to the north, and are changed: London stays where it is, changeless. Timeless.

Oh, the details vary. But not the essential _Londonness_ of the place. Decades before I was born, the surfacers' sun illuminated its rooftops, at least when the place wasn't blanketed in fog. (The old captain in the townhouse told me of that; she remembers such things from her childhood, before the relocation.) Decades after I am gone, those rooftops may be slightly different rooftops, and they may rest beneath something that is neither sunlight nor our rocky ceiling, but London will remain London. It remains. We change.

The young lady came to stand beside me. She looked towards that distant shore, but I do not believe she was looking at it properly. And after a time, she spoke. (She has learned to speak more briefly. I find myself missing her former style of charming babble. I suppose she has grown out of it.) She has ambitions of her own, with her father gone. To throw herself into the practical study of concrete things, instead of spiritualism and etheric flows and other such fluid uncertainty. All she needs is a teacher of sorts, and time to learn. Time that is spent a long way away from the snow.

What could I do but give her my own advice? I told her clearly that she ought to...

#

* _...join my crew, learning engineering on the job. We would have to remain quite professional, of course._ [Add the young lady to your crew as an officer. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]  
* _...apprentice herself to one of the engineers of London. And, if she so fancied, continue to meet with me whenever I return to London, so that we may continue our discussions more privately, and at greater length._ [Ask for a more permanent, and personal, arrangement with the young lady. Go to Chapter 11.]


	17. Chapter 17

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Departed with one passenger, two new zailors, and a hold full of cargo.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

What a man of the cloth has to do with this cargo, I don't know. Or more the exact opposite: why should a clergyman be escorting a selection of quite particular souls all the way back to Mt. Palmerston? Given the population that clings to the slopes of that volcano, I can't see that they need much preaching at, and he ought to be saving souls, not shipping them. All the same, shipping them we are, with labeled jars nestled in layers of straw within quite sturdy boxes. The man keeps reminding me that these souls are, as he puts it, "Not fungible," and if anything should happen to them, replacing them with _other_ souls of equal number will not suffice.

He deposited half the fee up front, so I don't mean to argue details. His souls will be delivered, and what's made of them after that is none of my affair.

Equally curious was the incident on the docks, just as we were about to cast off. A devil came pelting up to the side of the ship, arms waving, until I came over to the rail to speak with him. One is accustomed to seeing devils saunter, or lounge, or perhaps ride in pursuit of some unlucky creature: _running_ is quite out of my experience with them. This one was devil enough to not show any signs of being out of breath, despite the running, but I've seldom seen one of those yellow-eyed menaces look so flustered.

"You're going to Palmerston," he said, rather than asked. This, after our passenger had been surreptitious in such a paranoid, tiresome manner. "Never mind what for, we don't care. Take this letter to the address listed there, hand-delivered by you personally, and you'll be well compensated."

I noted the vagueness of this promised compensation, and kept my opinions on dealing with devils to myself.

"Yes, yes," he said, offering me the sort of smile that has likely charmed the souls out of many another woman, "but how would we ever acquire souls if all our promises were empty? And it's such an easy task, not at all out of your way."

The engine was ready to pull us away from the dock, and I had no time for further discussion. I told that devil...

#

* _...exactly what I thought of infernal promises, and left him standing there._ [Refuse the commission. Go to Chapter 18.]  
* _...that I'd deliver his d----d letter, but I expected it to be worth my while._ [Accept the commission. Go to Chapter 19.]


	18. Chapter 18

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Ash in the wine, and ash in the soup. Ash in my lungs and ash spotting my best black coat. I am heartily sick of Mount Palmerston before even arriving. We spent half a day detouring to the south after a lookout spotted a lifeberg, and all of tonight's dinner was spent in argument with my few officers as to whether or not that _was_ a lifeberg, or merely a whitish rock and a zailor with an over-active imagination. We are all inclined towards caution, given the stories we've heard of encounters between those vast icy beasts and ships even larger than the Virulent, but this has set us nearly a day behind schedule.

The clergyman spent all of dinner, to which he was invited as courtesy due his white collar, staring into his wine and mumbling into his soup. Perhaps he was mumbling about ash, or souls. He is a nervous little man and I've not been inclined to seek out more from what he says.

#

_From an intercepted letter between a spy and an unknown recipient_

The cuckoo's egg lies quiet within the straw, and all is well, Aunt Sally. I have reached the jolly holiday home we spoke of in the tea shop, and when the cuckoo hatches all the churches here shall enjoy its song.

I don't intend to return. I'm sure you'll forgive me. Nests do need to be lined, as we both know, and while you have been the dearest of aunts, a quiet parish calls to me. Somewhere warm and still, where things may hatch without disturbance. Please understand. I'll return the locket you gave me, and we shall call everything evening, yes?

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Set the clergyman on shore with his cargo, and good riddance to him. There was no one waiting for him at the docks, which seems odd for a man of the cloth with such a wealth of luggage, but perhaps it was only that we arrived a day late. He was in a great hurry to be off, with a hired wagon for his crates, and we were in no hurry to ask him to stay. I gave the crew leave, and set off to explore the slopes of the island for myself.

The ash buries everything, here. Or, more strangely, it only coats what it falls on, and never seems to build up high enough to drown what's below. The brimstone wind that sweeps down from the volcano's broken peak must be responsible for that: it brings the ash, and it clears the ash away, just like the waves on a sandy shore. The remnants of the settlement that was remain, without any of the settlers. Gaping doorways in houses. Empty windows in a chapel without a single charred pew left standing before the altar.

I stood at the top of a cliff for a time, looking out across the glassy chop of the zee against that side of the island. Stony, silent shores, and always covered with brimstone-reeking ash. It makes one wonder about the true nature of Hell, that the exiled devils would retreat here, and not somewhere I would think more congenial. Perhaps it was only that they had to run to the north, and this was the warmest island available to them in that direction. Or perhaps they sit around the molten rock inside the volcano even now, scheming their return in a place that reminds them of a more distant homeland.

On my return to the ship, I saw the clergyman skulking behind some thorny bushes and a stone wall, pretending to be fascinated with an ash-covered gravestone toppled over in the place he examined. (Why the previous settlers built graveyards, I can hardly say. Perhaps they're memorials to loved ones gone to the tomb colonies.) I pretended in turn not to notice him, and thus was spared any awkward conversation.

Back at the ship, discovered one zailor had gone scavenging on the beach without proper precautions. Will have to hire on more crew on my return to London.

#

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	19. Chapter 19

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Ash in the wine, and ash in the soup. Ash in my lungs and ash spotting my best black coat. I am heartily sick of Mount Palmerston before even arriving. We spent half a day detouring to the south after a lookout spotted a lifeberg, and all of tonight's dinner was spent in argument with my few officers as to whether or not that _was_ a lifeberg, or merely a whitish rock and a zailor with an over-active imagination. We are all inclined towards caution, given the stories we've heard of encounters between those vast icy beasts and ships even larger than the Virulent, but this has set us nearly a day behind schedule.

The clergyman spent all of dinner, to which he was invited as courtesy due his white collar, staring into his wine and mumbling into his soup. Perhaps he was mumbling about ash, or souls. He is a nervous little man and poor company. All the same, I poured him more wine after my officers left, and questioned him about devils. A waste of time and wine both: he evaded my questions, stammered out his few answers, and resorted to inept quotations of scripture when thoroughly cornered in conversation. "In the absence of names, yea, your sleep shall sweet." He said that, in a discussion of devils! So I asked him directly about the named bottles of souls in our hold.

Had to call a zailor to carry him to his bed, after he twisted an ankle in his haste to leave the room.

#

_From an intercepted letter between a spy and an unknown recipient_

The quaint little egg you gave me as a going-away present will of course be installed in the jolly holiday home I spoke about with you, but I worry about the nest. Some people hereabouts seem far too interested in the habits of cuckoos and starlings, which I maintain are none of their business. Perhaps this vacation is best kept short, under the circumstances. Or you could send along my cousin, who has always been so interested in traveling abroad. See that she brings a stout walking-stick, and is ready for many sermons, and minding those who don't pay attention during the services.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Set the clergyman on shore with his cargo, and good riddance to him. There was no one waiting for him at the docks, which seems odd for a man of the cloth with such a wealth of luggage, but perhaps it was only that we arrived a day late. He was in a great hurry to be off, with a hired wagon for his crates, and we were in no hurry to ask him to stay. I gave the crew leave, and set off to deliver the devil's letter.

The ash buries everything, here. Or, more strangely, it only coats what it falls on, and never seems to build up high enough to drown what's below. The brimstone wind that sweeps down from the volcano's broken peak must be responsible for that: it brings the ash, and it clears the ash away, just like the waves on a sandy shore. The remnants of the settlement that was remain, without any of the settlers. Gaping doorways in houses. Empty windows in a chapel without a single charred pew left standing before the altar. A road winding uphill, back and forth around places no one lives, until I came at last to the crater itself. 

In the crater's wall, a brass gate, which was the address listed on the envelope. Simple enough. But beside the gate stood a cottage built of black and jagged stone, yet all overgrown in honeysuckle. A deviless came out of the cottage to greet me, and for an instant I took her for a mortal woman. Her tea-dress could have graced the shoulders of any number of women of my age back in London, and her parasol shadowed her eyes. Then I saw the yellow in them, and the sharpness of her teeth when she smiled. Her eyes are quite intense: yellow as with all devils, but orange and peach as well, shading from the fiery to the soft. (It must be an illusion. Even flames can look soft and inviting.) "I am the guardian of this place," she told me. "You cannot pass."

I revealed to her the letter I had been given, and its destination. "A delivery for me," she said. "How considerate of you to bring it here! Would you care for a cup of tea, while I read it over? I long always for news of London."

It was only courteous to accept. She poured me a cup of tea, and we spoke of London for some time, once I had become quite certain the tea wouldn't kill me. Ten minutes of discussion on fog, nearly half an hour on hospitals and those too sick or poor to enter them... You wouldn't think these topics would brighten an afternoon, and yet the way she brought them up, the questions she asked me about my experiences with such things, left a glow inside my chest, as if I had sat down in my own room back in London with the fire blazing and the newspaper in hand after closing the window firmly against the mists outside. Is that a trick of devils, or only the way she speaks?

The letter lay on the table by the teapot, as if she had forgotten it entirely, though I am certain she had not.

"A captain like you must travel all manner of places," she said, and laid a hand over mine. Her skin was warm as stone beneath the sun. "Have you ever been to Irem? I've never been myself, but I need a small question answered. They're supposed to know the most fascinating things. If you meant to travel that way, you could get the answer for me. I would be so grateful."

I had no intention of doing more than refueling, restocking supplies, and turning right back for London, when I put the ship into harbor at Mount Palmerston this morning. I told her...

#

* _...that I had never been to Irem, and thanked her kindly for the tea._ [Decline her request. Go to Chapter 20]  
* _...that I had always meant to see Irem for myself, and might as well take the opportunity, now that it lay only a few days in the distance, and with the low cost of fuel at the dockside provisioners below._ [Travel to Irem for the deviless. Go to Chapter 21]


	20. Chapter 20

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Smooth sailing and warm feeling aboard today. Should make port tomorrow. Spotted a jillyfleur to the east, but it gave no pursuit.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

That devil from the Brass Embassy was waiting when we reached the docks. How did he know when we would arrive? Surely a devil wouldn't dawdle there for days, uncertain, until we were spotted. I suppose he might have had a runner sent. No matter. He sidled up to me with that louche smile and insisted on taking me to a pub where, he said, humans and devils alike could warm themselves on a blustery day. It was the lower half of a honey den, and the drink he ordered made my eyes water from across the table, though he ordered me a quite ordinary wine.

"Nothing but a bit of correspondence between old friends," he said. "How did you find her? Still tucked away in that cottage? Well-stocked with tea and trellises? As charming as ever, I hope. No, she's not anyone of particular importance. An old friend. Did you try looking inside the letter? I'm sure a captain like you wouldn't dream of it, and besides, your eyes look fine, not bloodshot in the slightest." On in this vein for some time, interspersed with questions that seemed of more importance to him. About what favors I might have done for the deviless, or refused to do. If she had mentioned any specific names. What I had been transporting for a particular clergyman. The way the clouds looked from high on Mount Palmerston as dusk fell, looking toward the east and the north.

The politics of the devils are of little interest to me. I answered him with something like the truth, and was paid quite well for my time. The memory of the deviless and her fingertips does linger, though, even here in London. I am at that fireplace, with journal instead of newspaper, window closed against the mist. When I look into the fire, the flames look exactly like the softness in her eyes.

#

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	21. Chapter 21

_From the logbook of the Virulent_  
_(Damaged portions have been redacted and marked accordingly)_

...Irem, at heading east-northeast for... seven times, with some damage resulting to... lost to the depths...

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

We will arrive in the pillared city, roses twining high around the columns and their petals falling into red drifts across the warm white marble of the streets. The statue of the seven-bodied serpent always stands on its pedestal at the center of the city, and after we dock I will walk up to its base and study it for some time. I will not remember afterwards why I chose to read that inscription, or what it said.* The inscription will not matter to me. An individual with pale eyes and bare feet will offer me a garland, and when I refuse, he will tell me that nothing in Irem is true except for what I already took from this place. "When?" "In the time you came before." "I have never been to Irem." "You have been to Irem six times, and this is your seventh and first."

(* The inscription has said before: "Seven thorned wreaths around seven scaled necks, and which neck is yours, captain?" It will not say that when I read it.)

I will not be able to decide if he lies or not.

The scent of coffee has always hung around the pillars at the House of the Amber Sky. I will return there some day. The first time my feet crossed its threshold, I was not yet myself and could not dream of the person I would become. When I am twelve years old I will enter that place carrying a bag of coffee beans for the captain of the ship I travel on, and when I am thirteen years old I will leave that place and never remember that I have been there, or that I walked away without any captain to board a ship where none of the zailors had met me before and all spoke as if they knew me. I will return to London at thirteen and take safer passage on safer ships and never return to Irem until I am a zee-captain myself. It is only the scent of rose petals crushed beneath my feet that will remind me of the previous visit, which was not my first. This is my seventh and first visit to Irem.

I passed by the House of the Amber Sky without entering. I found steps climbing upward, smooth and slick as ice, warm as the deviless's skin, and at the top of the stairs I will find the answer she sent me to discover. At the center of the stairs I will sit and write in my journal. At the place where the stairs divide, I will fling my journal away, off the endless staircases that twine about two pillars like the rose vines twine around the necks of the serpents that are not here, and before I throw it to the piles of rose petals down below, I will decide that my answer lies...

* _...to the left._ [Go to Chapter 22.]  
* _...to the right._ [Go to Chapter 23.]


	22. Chapter 22

_From a rubbing done on an etched section of floor in Irem_

She is the Walker and the staircase goes seven times around  
Seven times around in the circuit of the night sky  
Sevens on sevens to the mouth of the serpent  
The Walker climbs around and the up becomes the down  
And when all the circuits are done  
Seven is the number of the serpent's necks wreathed in roses  
Seven times she will enter, and eight times she will leave

_The unclear segment below may be a picture of a serpent devouring a staircase, or a woman in a hat; experts continue to debate this point._

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less maddened ending to this story, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	23. Chapter 23

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Half a day out from Irem, the sea around is quiet. We won't see the ashfall of Palmerston for another two days, if the weather and currents hold, and I have nothing to do but manage the ordinary functions of the ship, unless an emergency arises. Perhaps I ought to be bored. I am not. I am glad to be away from that place.

For what a maddening place Irem is! Had to retrieve my journal from a pile of rose petals, and there was something I realized there, lingering on the tip of my tongue, that I can't seem to articulate. About...bare feet? Childhood? Nonsense, I suppose. It's a place that could drive anyone mad, as my own ramblings show on the previous page. All that about visiting Irem before, when I know full well that I worked as a cabin girl on the Zee-Bat's Roost from the age of ten to fourteen, which ship never traveled anywhere more exciting than Mutton Island. And not often there!

The marketplace at Irem was most peculiar. Crushed petals everywhere, and the most normal luxuries being traded for the most peculiar things. One of my zailors attempted to purchase several crates of parabola-linen, as a sort of investment to sell back in London, and traded away...I still don't know what, but we've blocked the door of her cabin, and I have told the others to bring her food and drink only in pairs, with an officer at watch as they do so. I may yet recommend ear-plugs, as well. She has been saying the most unsettling things. Something about stairs, and serpents, and walking, and on in this vein. In any case, I simply located the contact the deviless had asked me to find, and traded the information she sent for a quite peculiar revelation.

I won't write it down. That feels...unsafe.

#

_From a report to the Admirality, by the Captain of the Flowering Bough_

See enclosed the list of ships seen entering and leaving the harbor during our time here. Of particular note is the Virulent, which is said to have arrived from London not long ago, and then sailed off to the east before returning. Rumors among zailors claim that one of their crew went mad at Irem. I attempted to confirm this, or discover more of its source, but the Virulent's captain is nowhere to be found. Wandering about to commune with nature, one of her officers said, if you could believe that, and not expected back for at least a day.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

"I knew another zee-captain, who would visit me here at times, but he drowned. Mortals do drown, so." She said that while looking directly into my eyes, the two of us seated at that ordinary kitchen table in a domestic little cottage, though I suppose most people don't think of basalt for the foundations of their domesticity. "If you gave me your soul, I could keep it safe. He never said yes. I would have kept it right here." The deviless laid her talons over her heart.

Do devils even have hearts? They have sharp teeth and sharp talons, yellow eyes and endless lies, and perhaps they have neither the kind of heart that pumps blood nor the kind that fills with longing. For the zee, for home, for specific people... But she has spoken so sweetly of London that she must know some kind of longing. She longs for the mists of London, and the souls of mortals. It stands to reason that she must be able to long for people, too. Or does she only want the souls inside them? If her long-drowned captain had given her his soul, would she have forgotten his name and not speak of him so wistfully?

I demurred, with good reason, and she didn't press the matter. Instead, she took the revelation I had brought her, and dissected it. Laid out that piece of information in strands of logic woven together with mystery. I did not follow the process exactly, but she frowned at what she had written out in that infernal script I can't read myself. A soft frown, and then biting her lip with those sharp little teeth.

"I must stay here," she said. "Will you investigate this matter for me? It would only take a few hours, at the most. A trip down the mountainside. Looking inside an old chapel for a particular object. If you find it, bring it back here. If not..." She leaned forward to pour me another cup of tea. "Perhaps there's no trouble at all. People do come and go, hereabouts."

I agreed in an instant, and set off in the direction she had noted after that cup of tea. It was an old chapel I had passed before on my travel. Ash-covered, empty. No space for so much as a zee-bat to hide. After an hour of searching, I found nothing...

#

* _...and returned to her cottage with the news._ [Spend the night with the deviless. Go to Chapter 40]  
* _...but decided to search the area about the chapel. I did not want to return empty-handed._ [Keep trying to find what she seeks. Go to Chapter 24.]


	24. Chapter 24

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I kicked ash about in the space outside the chapel for another hour. And would have called it all more than enough time wasted, and gone back, but for having smashed my boot against a stone I didn't expect. The lamp I had brought from the cottage let me see its nature: a gravestone, toppled over and buried entirely by ash. This gave me a particular idea, given what the deviless had said, as she plucked apart the revelation I'd brought her. And so, feeling half a fool for not simply returning to her cottage and company, I set off to where I had seen another sort of graveyard on my first trip up the mountain. Tombstones for those departed to the tomb colonies, but there was a connection, there. She might have sent me to the wrong tombstone-ringed location.

A good thing that I knew the path well enough by then to close up my lantern on the way. The house I had passed before, with its low stone wall and tombstones, and thought to be some sort of abandoned parish house, glinted from light shining through a broken window. Broken, but covered with dark cloth. I approached quietly, and saw a wagon drawn up behind the house.

If I were a woman who took to caution over curiosity at every turn, I would not be a zee-captain. I moved near to the house, and listened. Within, I heard the clank of metal against stone and earth. Scraping, and shuffling, and what I realized soon enough was digging being done. Two voices inside, one lower and one higher, spoke to each other periodically. The lower I recognized as that of the clergyman I'd carried, and the higher no one I could place. Some compatriot of his from the houses down by the docks. Through their commentary, I gathered that they were planting something--the carefully labeled souls, no doubt--in a cache within the church, for the purpose of someone else discovering them later and taking them for a legitimate abandoned treasure of the previous resident.

To what purpose? That, I never learned. My foot slipped in the ash outside, and the occupants of the house exited to investigate. Some minutes later, I no longer had the opportunity to ask pressing question of the clergyman or his companion, though I no longer believed him a clergyman in truth.

An unfortunate ending to a peculiar event. I bundled all the relevant items that might confuse a passing traveler by their presence in the parish house into the wagon, and returned to the cottage. There, the deviless assured me that she would see to the disposal and management of the whole affair. And while she expressed a general delight in the bottled souls, I could see full well that there was one in particular of special interest to her.

"Have I found what you wanted?" I asked her.

"In parts," she said. "We call it the Curate's Egg." And while she seemed quite amused by this, she refused to explain further. Refused, in that gentle way she has, where she asked me questions about other matters, and discovered a bottle of Greyfields for me, so that I could match cups with her celebratory amanita sherry. There were cups of both, and a near-confusion late in the night as to which cup was which, that had me spitting and her laughing. She laughs like a brass bell, heard far across the zee in a dark place.

When I woke the next morning, she lay beside me, hands clasped around one of the bottles. "It feels like the tide," she told me. "Or a heartbeat. Either way, you can taste the salt. Here." The deviless went hunting through a locked box, her back to me so that I could see none of its contents, and finally took out a brass chain hung with a most peculiar pendant. The gem hanging there was the size and color of one of her eyes, glowing like a banked coal. She fastened that about my neck, and I expected the gem to burn me, but it did not. It merely sits there, warm.

"So that you'll remember me," she said. "If you ever drown--no, before you drown, come back. I could keep so much more safe for you."

#

[Go to Chapter 25]


	25. Chapter 25

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The lights of home are too far still to be individual dots, but form in aggregate a soft glow to the west. I can see them from the window of my cabin, and on deck the zailors will be dawdling at the railings to watch that same glow. Distant fires, that we long for when we are at a distance, and find only brief comfort in when we are among them in their day-to-day reality.

The gift from the deviless is a warm spot against my collarbone, warm as her touch, and no cooler than the moment she gave it to me. I've worn it beneath my shirt since we left Mount Palmerston, and now...

#

* _...feel certain that I will always wear it. A devil knows nothing of love, but that memory is precious to me, and this reminder will keep me warm when the nights are long._ [Go to Chapter 39]  
* _...it is time to put it away. A devil knows nothing of love, and this trinket may be worth enough to pay for barrels of fuel that will keep me warm long after she has forgotten me._ [Go to Chapter 27]


	26. Chapter 26

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I have not set pen to paper again until now. I write _now_ as if I will recall this exact moment four decades from now, poring over my own private memoirs, and have as sharp a sense of what happened over the last two days as I do at this moment. Perhaps I will. Perhaps my mind will be going, and it is better if I am exact, for the sake of my future self.

I sent the exile through the mirror. She did not resist. She passed through the mirror as if it was water, or air, except that her dark spectacles caught on the glass and fell to the ground at my feet. She fell backward through that mirror, and when the spectacles caught, I looked her directly in the eyes. Only for an instant, and then the mirror fogged over, but it seemed a very _long_ instant, and I thought--this is no more peculiar than anything else that happened, yet I am not sure this part happened--I thought that the specks of gold rose up out of her eyes as she fell.

If it was what she wanted, she did not thank me. If it was not what she wanted, she did not object.

The mirror remained fogged for some time. I packed up what we had brought with us, by lantern-light in the dark, having no desire to remain beside the mirror all night. I had a plan of sorts: to return exactly as we had come, the same route, the same places stopped, for reasons of safety and confidence. I regretted (and will be glad here that I do not only hide this journal when on ship, but write it in code) not having a few crew with me, who might provide protection, or warning, against strange events among the mushrooms.

When I had gathered up all our belongings, and the lantern, and turned away from the mirror to set off, someone called my name.

_She_ called my name.

She never addressed me by name before, and certainly not by my Christian name. When I looked, she was standing in front of the mirror. On my side of the mirror, I should call it, for I am quite certain now that the mirror goes to another _place_ , whether it is Parabola, some place attached to the fringes of that land, or another land entirely. That mirror is a door that ought not exist. I will not return to it, or write of it anywhere but in this private record. (Perhaps I will tear out these pages and cast them into the zee. Or would the wrong things of the mirror-dark waves find my words there? Best to keep them safely locked inside the journal.) There is a something behind that mirror which I do not wish to deal with again.

She called my name, and smiled at me. Her eyes were the eyes of a woman who had never looked upon the Dawn Machine, or anything that might change a body as well as the mind. Brown at the irises, white around the edges, a perfect and normal black at the pupils. Eyes the colors of eyes, you might say. I would not have noticed them in any particulars before.

"I thought the mirror lied," I said to her.

"It didn't lie," she said. "It simply told things in the reverse." She laid a hand on my arm, as easily as that, and still smiled. "Let's return to the ship. We'll have to sneak me on board just as we hid me on the way off, to avoid trouble, but I'm sure you're up for the challenge."

I asked her, not elegantly, if she was indeed the exile, or some imitation created by the mirror, or even the person who the exile was before she was changed by stranger places than I have ever been. And she laughed, at that.

"It's exactly as the mirror said," she told me, "except in the reverse."

I still don't know what that means.

I am on the ship, and she has gone to her cabin. (The exile's cabin? The cabin that was once inhabited, for the space between two ports, by someone who looked very much like her.) She has changed, or she is not who she was, and she speaks with me freely in an almost ordinary manner. A clever woman with strange notions, but not the kind of notions that make me feel as if all of my future has already been written by an indifferent hand. Certainly she wishes to be closer to me than the exile ever indicated. As for me, having seen this change, and knowing some of how it was made,

#

* _...I am inclined to let her show me what she desires. She speaks more clearly of her wishes than the exile ever did._ [Pursue a relationship with her. Go to Chapter 11.]  
* _...I will not have her on my ship for long. I will set her ashore at the next port, well paid, and continue toward home. I remember too well what she came from._ [Return to London. Go to Chapter 2.]


	27. Chapter 27

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

The Brass Embassy is filled with devils, should you feel obliged to track them down for a sight of them in the flesh. Their yellow eyes and white teeth promise many things, but you ought not ever take their promises for granted. The wise traveler will admire from a safe distance, and never step through the busy doorways of that enormous building, nor speak at length to the people who do so themselves. This holds true for devils and humans alike; you must always have a little suspicion of those who deal with devils, if you wish to return safely home at the end of your trip.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

That officious, smirking devil with the letter had me follow him all the way back to the embassy itself, and then chattered away over drinks for more than an hour before he let me go. Most of it was nonsense, but there were more serious questions buried in there. I do wonder what he wanted regarding the color of the sky above Mount Palmerston, or if it was some sort of code? In any case, he seemed pleased enough with the results of his letter, and paid well for my trouble. Of this sort of beginning are spies made. I think I will make any future visits to that volcano without special instructions from the Brass Embassy in my pocket.

I said nothing of the gift she gave me. Whatever her intentions, it's mine by right. Tomorrow, I will stop by the market in Spite, and gain directions to a jeweler who can deal with unusual trinkets such of these. Perhaps it's worth nothing more than a handful of amber, and I might as well keep it as a memento. But the hull of the Virulent is still hastily patched from that incident near Irem, and I would be pleased to turn enough profit that we could set into drydock for thorough repairs before taking on a new commission.

#

[Go to Chapter 12]


	28. Chapter 28

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

In my experience, when a hansom cab pulls up beside a woman walking in the street, and a pair of strong-armed dockworkers suddenly bundle her inside, the story usually concludes unpleasantly for one or more of the three people so involved, to say nothing of whoever is in the cab. This morning's incident, on the contrary, left me inside the hansom with a tigress in a fashionable hat, who leaned forward to say in the most cultured local accents, "My apologies for the haste, Captain. It's only such a bother to be seen walking about in this area. I have a dire need, and hope you will be able to fill it for me."

After we had established that her need was not culinary, she went on to explain her actual desires. Apparently she is a speculator in teas, from Port Carnelian. That outpost is always longing to follow the fads of London, but news travels faster than useful cargo, and so merchants there are perpetually weeks or months out of date in being able to supply the most popular hat styles, pulp novels, and, as the tigress claims, tea.

I had been unaware of fads in tea, being fond of a brisk cup of coffee in the mornings (and few more through the day) myself. Tea is for having with guests one wishes to soothe or charm. But the tigress assures me that tea has its own fads, and she traveled to London to spend a full week investigating those who set the trends in the tea-drinking world. Now she intends to travel back to Port Carnelian with an enormous stock of the teas everyone will be clamoring to drink as soon as the fad blossoms--but her hired ship refused to let her aboard, on account of her nature.

"You see," she said, "the urgency of my plight. I can offer no more up front than what I did the previous captain, all of my other liquid assets having been invested in leaves, but on arrival you'll be rewarded handsomely. Or beautifully, as you prefer." Her fangs are quite white when she smiles, as I discovered in the darkness of that cab.

I do not entirely trust a tiger's promise, but I have agreed to take her and her cargo to Port Carnelian. The more nervous of my zailors have been reassured by reminders of the sapphires said to practically litter the beaches of that place. No doubt any sandy sapphires have long ago been snatched up, but by the time the zailors have discovered that disappointment, we will be at that destination. I will be sleeping with a stout club beside me in my cabin on this trip, though, that's for certain.

#

[Go to Chapter 29.]


	29. Chapter 29

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

Abbey Rock could not be called charming, nor exciting, nor even a particularly good place to spend a restful week after excessive hedonism in more festive ports. It is known mostly for its nuns, who are little inclined to be distracted from their religious duties by conversation with the outside world, though they do appreciate up-to-date newspapers. If you should find yourself on Abbey Rock, it is likely because you are on a ship heading to a more colorful destination, and wished to stretch your legs while supplies were procured. If you should find yourself on Abbey Rock for more than a day, you must either have a religious calling, or a failure to follow the simple instructions listed in our section on how not to be abandoned by irate zee-captains on a journey.

#

_From a letter between an unknown zailor and their lover_

Still no disappearances, despite the tiger. Tigress, the captain says, pointing out the beast's hat. Hats! What does a tiger want with a hat? It also wears spider-silk scarves with pink roses patterned across them, and stands on the deck chatting with officers like it doesn't have mighty fangs and cruel claws and eyes nearly as yellow as a devil's. "At least it won't eat your soul," says Old Crooknose, when I'm rolling a barrel of fuel to the boiler room with him. "Not like devils." At least devils have proper faces and skin, and wear clothes like proper people, and don't look like ravenous beasts.

I post this from Abbey Rock, in case we're all devoured in our beds on the subsequent journey, so that you may know I love you sincerely, and think of you in all times of quiet or peril. The nuns are trustworthy sorts. Not a peculiar hat to be seen among them.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

...and that's all I have to say on the topic of those damnable nuns, or I'll fill my pages with it, and have no space left to write about other events on the island. I had returned to the ship, and was about to set off, when a figure in nun's robes came rushing down the pier. Had me half in mind to set off faster, until I saw the dark spectacles on that wimple-shaded face. "Captain," said the woman, once she had my attention, "take me with you. I am no longer welcome here."

I expressed that we were sailing south, not north, and if she wanted a ride to London, she ought wait for another ship, or for our return. In truth, I was reluctant to bring the ire of those dour sisters down on me, and taking a false-nun away with me would likely do just that, if they had some punishment in mind.

"I am going south," she said. "It is inevitable. South before east." I confess that I found her unsettling, with her gaze hidden behind the dark glass, and the way she spoke. Confident, and yet...resigned? As if she were discussing what had already happened. "I have some experience of command. A ship like yours could use that."

If she'd had any gossip about the tigress on board, or the way the zailors were still nervous about that presence, she didn't mention that directly. (The tigress has been nothing but an excellent conversationalist and dinner companion so far. Zailors need a show of confidence to get them through such fears.) She mentioned very little directly. A suspicious woman in several ways. I told her...

#

* _...to come on board, and we would see what sort of first mate she made, at least until my next stop._ [Take the woman on board. Go to Chapter 30]  
* _...to find another captain heading south. I have nervous zailors enough without giving them a new officer suddenly._ [Refuse the woman passage. Go to Chapter 31]


	30. Chapter 30

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The tigress knows a great deal about fashion. She has been encouraging me at dinners to try a new style of hat, change the buttons on my deck coat, add a cravat before going ashore. "We females must always keep a keen eye on how we present ourselves," she said, between polite lapped mouthfuls of soup from the shallow bowl we've found for her. The other officers are particularly quiet at dinners now. "My mother taught me that when I was still only a cub. We traveled all through the southern isles, her in a dashing scarf, me with my charming little bonnet. If you come to a place like Aestival, you will be more than glad for a good hat."

The doctor opined that Aestival was merely a legend, and then the first mate, that newest of our officers, spoke up. "I have been there before," she said. "The sun pierces everything. It bleaches bones white. But I find it is the wrong sort of sun for other purposes." A lively discussion arose from there. The laughter and chatter from the diners may reassure the zailors, who have not taken to the tigress's presence aboard.

After dinner, I joined the first mate on her watch, and inquired delicately after the matter of Aestival and dark spectacles. She gave me a strange smile, and removed those spectacles, to show me eyes that shone bright, and amber irises. Like the tigress's, but more luminous, and flecked with gold. "I've been touched by the Dawn Machine," she told me. As straightforward as when she had asked for passage on my ship. "I thought you knew. Or you did, and asked after Aestival to pretend otherwise. In either case, nothing has changed, now that you know. We will still be wary of each other."

I cannot say I protested this statement. We spoke further, of her past and plans, though she seems to view the two as a single entity. What has happened was meant to happen, what will happen is bound to occur, or something along those lines. Mysticism has always given me a headache. I do remain wary, and more so for having discovered she has been to the southern shores before, and was exiled. For her involvement with the Dawn Machine, I suppose, and that is a piece of the world I have no desire to interfere with.

Regardless, this exiled officer of mine wishes to return to Port Carnelian, to bring "warmth to sunlight", as she put it. Apparently she has a box of cold light stored away in her quarters, along with her discarded nun's habit, and needs to have it heated. "Not by volcano or any other fuel," she said. "Nor by the surface sun. Ground heat is what it needs. Opposites attracted." 

#

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Lantern failed at midnight. Repaired within the half hour. First mate exhorted the crew to greater focus; a useful officer to have aboard.

#

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

Port Carnelian! If you wish to take a long journey to only one place outside of London, you must sail the Unterzee for this charming tropical destination. It is not, as you might think from other locations we have recommended, an island, but an establishment on the norther shore of a much vaster stretch of land, as yet mysterious and impenetrable. No doubt the Government will soon solve that puzzle! The portside community boasts all the comforts of London itself, from pie shops to tea shops to puppet shows, while being absolutely suffused with the warm tropical airs of the southern climate. 

Rather than being led to dangerous swamps by rumors of sapphire rivers deep in the jungle, take a guided tour through the botanical gardens of Mrs. Prufrock, then visit the attached museum with its stuffed specimens of many jungle denizens. Mrs. Prufrock is of the striped persuasion, as they say in this port, but a most genteel woman with mittened paws and a keen eye for anatomy. She can explain to you the strange wonders of the blue prophets, and even show you one! Fear not, for these are "prophets" only in the metaphorical sense, and the tigers of Port Carnelian are as civilized as most foreigners who make their way to your city above...

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Set the tigress ashore along with her tea. She's clearly an individual of some reputation in Port Carnelian, for the dockmaster sent for cargo-haulers the moment he laid eyes on her, and signed us in without any fuss. Once she had seen all her tea and luggage safely packed away, she suggested that I stop by for dinner this evening, and then spend a few days enjoying the wet, warm air of the jungles here.

"I don't know how humans stand it in London," she said. "All the damp, and none of the warmth! Or further north, where it's colder still, or drier. You must let me show you around while your zailors take shore leave. It will bring some health to everyone's cheeks. Zailors do tend towards the gaunt and nervous, I've noticed."

I kept the tigress in pleasant conversation while a few zailors took one of the small boats down the shore to a beach for a picnic, the exile hidden among them. With an old brown coat of mine thrown over her back and her face turned away from the docks, no one could spot her as anything but another zailor on leave. She has sworn that her search will only take a few days, and that she will be back on deck before we set sail at week's end. Well. "Sworn" isn't quite the right word, as she simply stated that this was so. The exile claims her destination is set, whatever route she may take as she gets there. She has also invited me to join her in her jungle search.

"We're having liver and mushrooms tonight," said the tigress. "The taste of home! Surely you'll stop by to dine with me. And then a while longer?" I agreed to join her for dinner tonight, and...

#

* _...expressed my polite regrets that I could not stay longer. The exile's quest intrigues me._. [Assist the Carnelian Exile. Go to Chapter 34]  
* _...accepted her generous offer. The zailors could use the recovery time, and I have no fondness for jungle expeditions._ [Stay with the tigress for a few days. Go to Chapter 33]


	31. Chapter 31

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The tigress knows a great deal about fashion. She has been encouraging me at dinners to try a new style of hat, change the buttons on my deck coat, add a cravat before going ashore. "We females must always keep a keen eye on how we present ourselves," she said, between polite lapped mouthfuls of soup from the shallow bowl we've found for her. The other officers are particularly quiet at dinners now. "My mother taught me that when I was still only a cub. We traveled all through the southern isles, her in a dashing scarf, me with my charming little bonnet. If you come to a place like Aestival, you will be more than glad for a good hat."

The doctor opined that Aestival was merely a legend, and a lively discussion arose from there. The laughter and chatter from the diners may reassure the zailors, who have not taken to the tigress's presence aboard.

#

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Lantern failed at midnight. Repaired within the hour. Crew uneasy.

#

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

Port Carnelian! If you wish to take a long journey to only one place outside of London, you must sail the Unterzee for this charming tropical destination. It is not, as you might think from other locations we have recommended, an island, but an establishment on the norther shore of a much vaster stretch of land, as yet mysterious and impenetrable. No doubt the Government will soon solve that puzzle! The portside community boasts all the comforts of London itself, from pie shops to tea shops to puppet shows, while being absolutely suffused with the warm tropical airs of the southern climate. 

Rather than being led to dangerous swamps by rumors of sapphire rivers deep in the jungle, take a guided tour through the botanical gardens of Mrs. Prufrock, then visit the attached museum with its stuffed specimens of many jungle denizens. Mrs. Prufrock is of the striped persuasion, as they say in this port, but a most genteel woman with mittened paws and a keen eye for anatomy. She can explain to you the strange wonders of the blue prophets, and even show you one! Fear not, for these are "prophets" only in the metaphorical sense, and the tigers of Port Carnelian are as civilized as most foreigners who make their way to your city above...

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Set the tigress ashore along with her tea. She's clearly an individual of some reputation in Port Carnelian, for the dockmaster sent for cargo-haulers the moment he laid eyes on her, and signed us in without any fuss. Once she had seen all her tea and luggage safely packed away, she suggested that I stop by for dinner this evening, and then spend a few days enjoying the wet, warm air of the jungles here.

"I don't know how humans stand it in London," she said. "All the damp, and none of the warmth! Or further north, where it's colder still, or drier. You must let me show you around while your zailors take shore leave. It will bring some health to everyone's cheeks. Zailors do tend towards the gaunt and nervous, I've noticed." I agreed to join her for dinner tonight, and...

#

* _...expressed my polite regrets that I could not stay longer. The jungle is no place for a vacation._ [Take dinner and go. Go to Chapter 32]  
* _...accepted her generous offer. The zailors could use the recovery time before we set out into the dark again._ [Stay for a few days. Go to Chapter 33]


	32. Chapter 32

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Narrowly escaped a flock of blue prophets on exiting Port Carnelian. Detoured northwest for a full day while conducting repairs. Crew morale remains low.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Do I need to acquire a first mate in London? Or some sort of mascot, perhaps. Stuff a kitten into the hold to keep an eye on any rats of the less clever type, and see if the crew perks up. You would think they would have appreciated the sight of white sand and those amazing fungus jungles of Port Carnelian, and yet they remain sullen. I may have encouraged them too much in the way of sapphire dreams.

Regardless, it has been a profitable journey, and the sapphires in my cabin do not need mentioning to the crew at large. The tigress paid well, and I would not be loath to take another commission from a ~~woman~~ ~~lady~~ individual such as her.

My dreams have been restless. Mirrors and eyes, especially amber eyes. There is no surprise as to why I would be dreaming of the latter. The nightmares will fade once we reach home port. The zee always does leave its mark.

#

[Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	33. Chapter 33

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Spent yesterday evening at a dinner of such meat and wine both that my head still feels the effects this morning. The dining room could have come from the old captain's townhouse, being decorated in a distinctly London style, but for the preponderance of divans rather than chairs. "I'm told that in one of the old cities, before London, there was a great deal of lounging about on couches," the tigress told me. "Or was that a surface city? It's so easy to confuse those dry and cold places." She matched me cup for cup, and told me stories of travel in her youth. I cannot quite believe that half the places she describes exist, but the zee stretches far and wide, and there are many peculiar islands out there. And her stories of the Khanate, well, those I've heard from others before. So perhaps it's all true.

After dinner, the tigress invited me upstairs to the conservatory to examine her collection of rare luminescent fungi. She told me that there was nothing quite as right for post-prandial relaxation as sitting down amidst the mushrooms with another glass of wine and watching their glow change as the evening grew later. "Each taken from its home, and brought here to show its brightest nature," she said. "It's not all violet and white, you know, any more than hats are all feathers and ribbon. The connoisseur knows to look for the details."

I protested that I was no connoisseur, being a zee-captain of rather straightforward tastes. "Precisely why you need the services of one who is," she said, "for otherwise you might remain entirely straightforward to the point of excess. Or to the point of paucity?" She demonstrated enormous white fangs when she smiled, and selected a single crescent piece of a blue-radiant fungal growth from one of her pots. (Its color remains quite vivid in my mind, and sometimes in my vision, when I close my eyes or stare into the distance. That ought to fade. Eventually.) "Even if you won't take my advice on buttons, take it on where to start in my private collection."

It may well be that my headache lingers because of the effects of the mushrooms. A convivial evening, in full, though quite unexpected--no, not unexpected, simply astonishing, at moments. The tigress's collection did live up to everything she promised about it, and one cannot argue with her tastes in many things.

#

_From the gossip section of the Carnelian Courier_

A recent arrival, Captain Z---, has been spotted walking through the botanical gardens with a certain tigress of colorful reputation. Our sources say they took saucers of tea together at Murgatroyd's, and were overheard discussing the most fashionable tea trends of London. Will this rugged zee-captain become a permanent fixture in our city, or sail away and break a tigress's heart? Only time will tell, gentle friends.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The temptation to linger remains, but I have already lost one of my crew to the violet jungle. A fine zailor, but she is said to have followed something or someone--the specifics are uncertain, and descriptions vary wildly--into the wild fungal growth, and has not emerged in the days since. I am a zee-captain, not an explorer of terra firma, and it is time to pack up my remaining crew along with my payment. We will not sail home with holds full of sapphires, but the trip has made me a tidy sum, even aside from the nominal payment I'll accrue for reports I've made on our stops along the way.

One more dinner with the tigress tonight, and then I will make my farewells. There are sensations found only in her private garden and conservatory that I will miss. The headaches the morning after, and disturbing content of my dreams lately, well. Those I will miss rather less.

#

[Go to Chapter 32]


	34. Chapter 34

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Excused myself at last from dinner at the tigress's surprisingly large estate. Port Carnelian holds a wealth of sapphires, as everyone well knows, but I had not realized what a fortune lies waiting for those who cater to the people managing the sapphire trade. Apparently they all long for the comforts of home, whether that comes in the form of tea trends or the magazines stuffed with updates to their favorite serials. A zee-captain with a very small, fast ship could make a tidy living simply running newspapers between home and this port as rapidly as possible. A zee-captain other than myself, that is; I have no desire to turn my work into another endless cycle between the same two places, no matter how lucrative. Besides, a small, fast ship can be swallowed whole by an angler crab encountered without sufficient warning.

I write this as if I am the soul of caution. Perhaps I am more the soul of unwise adventure, for I have followed the exile into the fungal wilderness that surrounds Port Carnelian. After leaving that dinner I mentioned above, I set out to the beach where my crew had deposited the woman, and found the pre-arranged signal: a strip of red cloth hooked over a spiny outgrowth, as if torn from the clothes of some heedless passerby. Red told me to continue due south, and so I did, until I came upon the exile herself. She stood there in the uncanny glow of the jungle, limned by the radiance of white mushrooms at her feet. I suggested that it would have been more comfortable to sit down and wait for my arrival, as there was an odd tremor to her legs, and I did wonder if she had been standing the entire time, while I took my leisure at dinner.

"I am no longer welcome here," she said. "The inhabitants at the port are not the only ones who feel repentance does not suffice." She turned away from me. "You will follow me through the mirrors, or you will not. I will find myself in the east regardless."

A cautious woman would have left for harbors, ships, and estates with high walls right then. I followed her, and watched where she set her feet as we proceeded more deeply into the jungle. My inquiries regarding mirrors got little in the way of useful response. She referred to Parabola, which is, as I understand of it, not a proper _place_ at all, so much as a convenient reference for the land of dreams. Insofar as it is a land. Which does, in fact, produce strange types of linen, though I have never found anyone among the weavers of Spite who will admit to weaving it into cloth, or discuss how it is procured.

At times I am not certain if the exile is mad, or if she knows what lies beyond mortal minds so clearly that she merely _seems_ mad, in comparison to our understanding of matters. She says Aestival is real, and who would believe such a story of searing light, or that such a hole could exist in the ceiling of our world? But the tigress claimed to have visited the place as well, and the tigress seems as grounded a creature as I have ever met in the Neath, despite her passion for hats. That sun-bleached madness was truth, which only seemed mad because of my lack of experience. Perhaps these allusions the exile makes to mirrors, Parabola, a jungle unlike this one of towering fungus, the things found beyond the mirrors, are another true expression of sanity I simply can't comprehend.

Among the things I cannot easily comprehend are this jungle. I have been to a funging station, once when I was much younger, on a trip where that destination was the primary novelty of the entire dark and dreary voyage. The white caps towered overhead like the steam clouds of the city, and the stalks rose straight, smooth, and proud in every direction. The smaller fungi on the ground had their own hazards, but could be safely avoided; we stepped carefully, picked the small shoreward mushrooms that the ship's doctor indicated, and came back with plenty of supplies, completely unharmed. But here the stalks bend and bulge, and fins of soft fungus grow in spirals along the vast stalks, marked out in other colors. 

We spent several minutes this evening, surrounded by the surreal twilight of the fungal glow, finding a way to pass around a vast and singular growth with a violet surface that stung at a mere touch. At last we had to crawl through a tunnel lined with gills. The sort that grow on mushrooms, not on fish, though they heaved back and forth in a way that was--life-like? Of course fungus is alive, as any plant might be. All the same, it seemed more wakeful inside that tunnel than one wishes to see when moving through an overgrown mushroom.

Regardless. We have set up camp for the rest of the night. The both of us are weary: I from exercise directly after an enormous dinner, and the exile for reasons of her own. She says that we will reach the place she seeks at twilight tomorrow, and she says it the way I might speak not of changing shifts or putting more fuel in the engine, but as I speak about time progressing and the zee remaining. Something fixed and inevitable. We are not far from that enormous growth, and have laid out simple bed rolls under canvas. I ought to give up on my writing, and sleep; she fell asleep long ago. Tinted glasses folded beside her face, and eyes closed, so that she looks like any woman might.

Perhaps I should have brought along a few zailors, to trade off watches. But this part of the jungle seems safe enough. We have made camp...

#

* _...on high ground, with a clear view of our surroundings, which I expect will keep us safe._ [Go to Chapter 35.]  
* _...in the hollow of another large growth, where little will see us or be able to come at our backs, which I expect will keep us safe._ [Go to Chapter 36.]


	35. Chapter 35

_From the third chapter of Mycroft's Guide to Carnelian Fungus_

...though its cousin, the _Lentinus carneroseus_ , also known as the "Rosy Death", is another matter entirely. This mushroom, when found in its juvenile form, is delicious in an oyster soup and has been served in the finest dining rooms throughout Port Carnelian. However, it has also been known to grow to the size of an opera house, at which point precautions are in order when dealing with it.

First, do not climb to the top, as this has been known to attract blue prophets, for reasons naturalists have not explained with any theory plausible enough to be included within this text.

Second, do not eat any portion of the mushroom when it is larger than a shack, as the adult specimens begin producing a hallucinogenic spore as part of its reproductive cycle. This leads to red-tinted images of murder, hence the name, and a surprisingly calm demeanor in the imbiber. Despite the claims of a certain professor not worthy of citation, these are neither prophetic visions, nor ones revealing the details of existing crimes, and they _certainly_ do not pass on a "Jack-of-Smiles infection" or anything of that sort.

Third, do not make camp within a few yards of the bulk if it is larger than a customs office. On rare occasions the subsurface portions of the mushroom have been known to rise up and consume unwary travelers. While this process takes several hours, anyone so consumed will also be thoroughly calmed by the aforementioned hallucinogenic spores, so it cannot rightfully be called a horrific fate. All the same, the wary traveler should keep an accordingly wary distance, and also keep this in mind when considering a test of the second property mentioned above.

#

[Go to Chapter 37.]


	36. Chapter 36

_From the journal of an experienced adventuress_

At noon, my eagle-eyed ward spotted a most peculiar item in the undergrowth, and I called the expedition to the halt. Or I might say: a most ordinary item, unusual for its location! For it seems she had seen the trailing end of a tarp, of the sort we ourselves use for putting up tents at night. I directed the luggage-carriers to investigate, as the end of the tarp led beneath one of the _Lentinus carneroseus_ growths we had noted in the area.

The excavation lasted most of an hour, with shovel, axe, and fungal-saw at hand, but we uncovered the grisly remains of a pair who had clearly not read _Mycroft's Guide to Carnelian Fungus_ before setting out in this area. A pair of fleeing lovers, laid to rest side by side for eternity? Adventurers, seeking the same fabled mines I sought myself? Naturalists who had no chance to regret their inattention to detail? My ward was taken with the mystery, and gathered up what she could of the remains to take back home. She hopes to rescue the text of a dampened book she found with them, which might be an account of their quest.

A charming notion, though I worry it distracts her from our true goal. How will she ever become a proper adventuress if she keeps being caught by fiction, fancies, and _books_?

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less fungal conclusion, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	37. Chapter 37

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Unsettled. Writing matters out not only for a matter of personal record and recollection, as usual, but to sort them.

I should begin at the beginning of the day. We left our clear ground and continued due south as before. The place we had slept was dappled with white, from spores or some other fungal side-effect: it changed the landscape, as if we had been transported in our sleep, though... It was the same place. I have been making note of landmarks, for the return, and it was the same place, only slightly changed. A little whiter. A little more overgrown.

I will be very cross if I return to my ship and find fifty years passed overnight as I slept, like in one of those stories told to children.

A long day of hiking between mushrooms. We moved slowly, carefully. Stopped often for reasons that weren't clear to me. The exile is--I want to say "clear-eyed", as if I could see her eyes! She keeps the spectacles in place, despite what I know. Perhaps they give her comfort. I am not certain anything can give her comfort or take it away. We spoke, and I don't always know what _of_. The east? But we are going south. The Dawn Machine? But we are in a world of glow, not any sort of sunlight, not the light of _any_ kind of sun. The mushrooms here are the exact temperature of the hot, warm air around us. She spoke of what I might do when I seek my burning name.

What is my burning name? Why would I seek it? This would be so much easier if I could dismiss her as mad. Or if I could be sure she's _not_.

We found her mirror.

That's the problem. It's not a problem, I think. It's what she wanted. She it was a necessary part of the journey. "For when all the lamps go out," she said, and I asked her if we would simply replace lamplight with glowing fungus, and I have been out among violet and white mushrooms for too long. A full day is far too long, I swear, and I will never walk into these jungles again, after I am done with this. But I will see this throught.

We found a mirror leaning against a mushroom. It sounds ridiculous, put like that. A mirror as tall and broad as I am, hat included, bright and silver as it would be hung inside a lady's dressing chamber, simply resting against a simple white mushroom stalk that could have come from an orderly funging station. The air around was hot and damp as if we were surrounded by baths, and the exile walked up to the mirror--unclouded! That was odd, I realize now. The glass should have been clouded, in all that jungle steaminess, and it was not.

She walked up to the mirror, and put a hand to its surface. She spoke. So quietly I thought she was whispering to the mirror, until she looked back to me, and I realized she was whispering to me. And so I drew near. What else could I do? Drew near, and looked at the mirror, as she explained that the mirrorcatch box she carried was this one's...not twin. Descendant? Worshipper? It made sense when she said it, I think, but I can't recall the words exactly now, and I have always been so good at recalling exact words.

"It won't address me," she said. That I do remember exactly. "I am an exile of this place still. This is why I needed you to come. I am the only choice I have. Do you believe you still have a choice?"

I said quite firmly that I did, though I am not certain she believed me. Certainly the mirror did--and listen. There I go. Saying that the mirror _believed_ me.

She handed me the box she had brought, and walked away. Turned her back quite deliberately. And the mirror--

Perhaps it is only mushrooms. The mushrooms emit spores, the spores have effects. I imagine things. I am writing these things down, which I imagined, and tomorrow I will look at all this again, further from the hallucinations, and be quite amused. Right now I am not amused. My imagination, or hallucination, or whatever it was, is such:

The mirror showed me two choices. In one, I opened the box the exile gave me, and displayed its insides to the mirror. The surfaces reflected back and forth, the jungle's mirror and the ones in the box, catching _something_ between them, and then the _something_ in the box writhed and broke free and came swirling around, like mist, to consume me. In the other, I took the exile to the mirror, and pushed her through. She stepped not through broken glass, but through the mirror itself, as if it was an open door. And on the other side, she turned around to look back at me, smiling, with eyes untouched by the Dawn Machine. Eyes unburnt by the sun. Brown and black set in white, ordinary and human, nothing like the gold in her eyes now. In that vision, that _hallucination_ of the mirror giving me options, she stepped back out of the mirror again, remade to what she once was.

I don't know what she once was. I don't know what the mirror would make her. Is that what she wanted? Does she say that she has no choice, but believe, somewhere deep inside, that this isn't true? Has she brought me here to save her from what she has done? Or is the mirror trying to trick me into destroying her, whom it has already exiled?

This is nonsense. This is all nonsense. It is a mirror, and it cannot say anything to me, and I am going half-mad in this place, with too much mushroom and not enough clear air. Not enough normal light. But it is nearly twilight, and the exile stands only a few yards away. Waiting for me to make a choice.

# 

* _This is all nonsense. I will leave now, and let her do as she wishes with this mirror._ [Go to Chapter 43.]  
* _I will show the mirror the box, as I believe the exile wishes, come what may._ [Go to Chapter 38.]  
* _I will send the exile through the mirror, as I believe she truly wishes, come what may._ [Go to Chapter 26.]


	38. Chapter 38

_Transcribed from the walls of an asylum inmate_

Look! She opened the box! I can see it coming out of the mirror. It doesn't want into the box, and the box will make it bigger and nastier and STRONGER and FASTER and it doesn't want into the box, does it? It doesn't want into the box!

Why in my head? I go to the place with the mirrors and I look through them and she is in my head, the two of them, both women in my head, the one with the box and the one nearby. She opened the box in front of the mirror. She shouldn't have done that. It's coming out of the mirror, and it wants to eat her. It is strong and it is fast and she is tall and she is quick and it spirals around her.

I don't like the spirals. Why are they in my head? The mirrors in the dreams show me what she's doing. She shouldn't have opened the box. She needs to close it, but she shouldn't have opened it, and it's trying to eat her.

Look! She knows it wants to eat her. She knows what it'll do to her. She knows what the mirror said, and I couldn't warn them. I couldn't because the MIRROR gets what it WANTS. I know what she's going to do next. Every night. I know what she's going to do.

#

* _She's going to drop the box, down onto the ground._ [Go to Chapter 41.]  
* _She's going to throw the box, and run away._ [Go to Chapter 42.]


	39. Chapter 39

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

The Brass Embassy is filled with devils, should you feel obliged to track them down for a sight of them in the flesh. Their yellow eyes and white teeth promise many things, but you ought not ever take their promises for granted. The wise traveler will admire from a safe distance, and never step through the busy doorways of that enormous building, nor speak at length to the people who do so themselves. This holds true for devils and humans alike; you must always have a little suspicion of those who deal with devils, if you wish to return safely home at the end of your trip.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

That officious, smirking devil with the letter had me follow him all the way back to the embassy itself, and then chattered away over drinks for more than an hour before he let me go. Most of it was nonsense, but there were more serious questions buried in there. I do wonder what he wanted regarding the color of the sky above Mount Palmerston, or if it was some sort of code? In any case, he seemed pleased enough with the results of his letter, and paid well for my trouble. Of this sort of beginning are spies made. I think I will make any future visits to that volcano without special instructions from the Brass Embassy in my pocket.

I said nothing of the gift she gave me. Whatever her intentions, it's mine by right. The memory of her fingertips does linger, though, even here in London, and the way they lay across the back of my neck as she fastened the clasp of the chain there. Chained by a quiet deviless, in her very home! The subject for sensationalist stories in the pulps. And yet there is nothing infernal or scandalous about me now. I am at the fireplace of my lodgings with my journal on my knees, window closed against the mist. When I look into the fire, the flames look exactly like the softness in her eyes.

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	40. Chapter 40

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I was sorry to bring her the news, but the deviless seemed unconcerned. "Sometimes," she told me, "things are exactly as they seem." Which I said was an unusual sentiment from a devil, though I was not so rude as to mention the way they are known to lie. 

She poured me a glass of spirits. And realized, before I drank it, that it had been amanita sherry. "I'm not trying to poison you," she said, so contritely, as she took the glass away. "Force of habit! So few people visit me here that it's always a celebration. Let me find a bottle of your sort of wine. Or another cup of tea? Tell me more about the way London smells, down by the docks. Out in the marshes. If you haven't been the marshes, you must. There's no sound like the call of the hunting horn there. It sets the blood surging about in the veins. Like tides. Up here, the tides seem so distant, but I know they're down at the shore. Waiting for a visit."

I had another cup of tea, and we spoke of London. Of tides. Of hearts, after a time, and the way blood moves through them, or the way they move blood away. In and out, that constant push to go and do and live. After a time, we dispensed with the tea, and had other sorts of conversations in the darkness of her cottage.

In the morning, I woke to the weight of her head lying on my chest. Not listening to my heartbeat, as I thought for a moment, but feeling the call of my soul, where it still resides inside my body.

"You must bring me a few," she said, her fingers resting there between my breasts. "To keep me company, since the tide refuses to climb up the mountainside and visit."

#

[Go to Chapter 20]


	41. Chapter 41

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I have not set pen to paper again until now. I write _now_ as if I will recall this exact moment four decades from now, poring over my own private memoirs, and have as sharp a sense of what happened over the last two days as I do at this moment. Perhaps I will. Perhaps my mind will be going, and it is better if I am exact, for the sake of my future self.

When I showed the mirrorcatch box to the jungle's mirror, something came out of the mirror. Out, or _through_ , for I am quite certain now that the mirror goes to another place, whether it is Parabola, some place attached to the fringes of that land, or another land entirely. That mirror is a door that ought not exist. It set a monster on me for the crime of showing it a different sort of mirror.

Monster, I say. What else should I call it? A serpent of mist, or a strangling fog, or a set of reflections reflecting themselves back and forth, mirror to mirror with nothing between, until the mass built up into a force. It howled with a voice made of light and heat, and I did not so much fight it off as tear myself free, as if I had been wrapped in burning canvas and had to escape its clutch. Escape, but see it torn and extinguished. I am certain that if I had tried to flee, it would have pursued me, and I do not wish to contemplate what could have happened after that.

I won free. I tore apart the mist and reflections, vanquished heat and light, slew the serpent, if you will, though it was an imaginary sort of serpent. (And no less real or dangerous for that.) I forced its wisps of fog and its hot breath back into the wet ground. I stomped its head into splashes of mud. And when I had finished, the mirror was a flat gray, all reflection gone, and as solid as the hull of the Virulent itself.

I closed the box, and gave it to the exile as a prize.

"You have done what you always intended to do," she said, as if I had never had any doubts. (Were my doubts imaginary? Could I have chosen differently? I feel that I might've done differently, but she was so sure I could have done nothing otherwise.) "Now I must go where I am expected."

"To the east," I said.

"In the end," she said. "There are stops along the way, and lamps to see extinguished."

We returned together to where I had met her in the jungle, but I could not convince her to return to the ship. Not as officer, or passenger, or any other type of traveler. What she will do at the fringes of a port that will not have her, I do not know, but _she_ seems to know, and that will have to be enough for me.

The crew is unhappy. So be it. They would be unhappier by far if I told them what had happened in the jungle, and they will return to their ordinary superstitious and amiable selves once we have returned to our home for a time.

#

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	42. Chapter 42

_From the journal of an experienced adventuress_

My eagle-eyed ward spotted a bright glint in the gloom. For a moment, I believe we had found it. The source! The glowing crack in the earth that would show us the way to the brightness below! But no, it was only a great deal of broken glass. Mirror glass, as it turned out, and quite a lot of it. Enough to hang a few full-length mirrors in a room.

We searched the area for some time, but discovered nothing else of interest, nor any explanation for the presence of the glass, except for a pile of quite damp camping gear. My ward was taken with the mystery, and gathered up what she could to investigate later. She hopes to rescue the text of a dampened book she found with the gear, which might offer an explanation for all the glass.

A charming notion, though I worry it distracts her from our true goal. How will she ever become a proper adventuress if she keeps being caught by fiction, fancies, and _books_?

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less mysterious conclusion, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	43. Chapter 43

_From a letter between a tigress and her daughter_

And then the zee-captain I mentioned earlier came staggering out of the south, poor thing, looking an absolute wreck. She won't speak of what happened, though it did a number on her clothing for certain. I put her to bed with soup, and made certain all her crew had another night at one of those rowdy houses down at the docks.

Whatever adventure she was up to in that place, she wouldn't tell me the next morning, either. Insisted on sailing away. Claimed she was just fine, had gone for a bit of a walk and gotten lost, nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about, with her coat in that state! I made sure to sneak a bale of good sturdy broadcloth onto her ship, with the help of one of her zailors, before she left port. I am sure you will say you're not surprised, given the company I prefer, and then you will say that if I care so for clothing, why do I insist on making friends who are so bad with their own? Well, I tell you, darling, as coats never suit the two of us, I may as well find people who do to put them upon, and while I'm at it, find the sort of people who will need the help time and again...

#

[Go to Chapter 32.]


	44. Chapter 44

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Took tea with the old captain at her townhouse this afternoon, and found myself volunteered for a journey of sorts. "You'll like it," she said, which is reason enough to be suspicious. She seldom speaks of _liking_ , when she could speak of hazard or profit, or simply be as cryptic as is her wont. At times I wonder if white hair comes matched with one of two symptoms: senility or obliquity. Having avoided one, she has taken up the other.

Regardless, I allowed myself to be volunteered, as for once she marked out a clear point on my charts, and even gave advice on an indirect route to take there. "As you don't want to sail through the Sea of Lilies," she said, "unless you have business with the prison, which you do not. You'll find captains who claim the port is a dull but acceptable stop along the way, and you should not believe them. Not while zailing in _that_ ship." One might have reason to suspect that even with a fresh paint job and changed captain, the prison guards would recognize the Virulent for some past action of the old captain. I will choose the better part of valor, and follow the route she suggests.

The route, in any case, is not the point of the commission: I have been volunteered to the Admirality as a captain of reliable and incurious nature, who will deliver a particular individual to Aeschaven, or Godfall--I am not sure which is the island, and which the port, from how they have been marked out--and then return with the same individual, having asked no questions along the way, and showing not the slightest interest in what might be occurring at our destination.

The old captain knows better than that. I wonder what sorts of questions she expects me to ask, and how many of the answers she hopes I will bring back to her?

#

[Go to Chapter 50.]


	45. Chapter 45

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The sea is silent and pale tonight. A fog bank surrounds us, and phosphorescent creatures churn in our wake, vanishing under the gray behind us as quickly as our forward lights vanish into the gray ahead. None of my charts warn me of dangerous shoals in this area. We are as well hidden from any danger as we could reasonably wish, and I would like to find this comforting, but instead the lights before and behind make me feel as if we are suspended in one place. Water rushes past us, but what if it is only the water moving, and not us? A ship caught on an invisible pike, fixed in place, while all the zee turns into a silent current pulling past. How would we know?

We will all feel better when we can see the roof overhead again. The false-stars are a kind of comfort. I have never been much of one for seeing signs in the constellations, but the lights themselves show a kind of boundary to things which I enjoy. All things are finite. Life, the zee, the Neath itself. Finite, measurable, knowable. These scientific thoughts reassure me when the zee itself grows too dark and mysterious. It is only water, and the way light reflects across it, and natural creatures--however strange some are!--residing in the zee. Half the dangers of the zee come from other people, in any case, and what is more scientific or natural than the human tendency toward selfishness and cruelty? There is no need to look to the devils to understand pirates. They exist even in the sunlit lands above.

Someone is knocking at my door.

Later. The knock came from the spy. She brought a bottle of wine, a newer vintage, but not a bad one. "Because you're full of questions," she said, as if I had invited her in, and I suppose I didn't tell her to stay out. She found a place to sit, and opened the bottle on my table, right beside the journal I had just closed. "Have you ever been to Whither? Nothing but questions, there. It'll drive a body mad. Just try to find out what you want to know, however simple it is! In any case, you do have questions, don't you?"

I allowed that I had many questions, but also the ability to contemplate them in quiet, given the twin restraints of wisdom and propriety. To which she said, "Propriety isn't everything. I've known people who are very _proper_ , and I'd rather have the alternative. You've met the ones who want to follow all the rules, even the rules no one wrote down! There's nothing more tedious than that kind of--what would you call it? Sincerity? Or integrity. Imagine being the same person all your life, beginning to end."

I raised various alternatives that had no appeal. "See," she said, "you talk about it as if it's binary. Order and chaos, masters and minions, honesty and lies. Well, there are solid things, and things that aren't so solid. Engines and dreams, if you will. You'll find that if you look long enough, people are a bit of each. I suppose it's not so bad if they want to cling to one side. It's like parents, don't you think? Do you favor your father or your mother?"

We disposed of the bottle of wine in conversation such as this. Too much to record in detail. She asked after various ports I had visited, as if she cared only a little for the answers, and I think she cared rather more than she let on. If she is not a spy, she is the next thing to one. I find that this doesn't bother me.

#

[Go to Chapter 46.]


	46. Chapter 46

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Passing through the Corsair's Forest. All lamps off but the running lights. Lighthouse sweeps are more danger than comfort here.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Beware the Sea of Lilies, indeed! What kind of advice was that, when that old captain could have told me more of pirates? Scarcely any prey on the travel lanes near the tomb-colonies, but this spiky wash is filled with them. Littered with them. Rusty old tubs too wary to even approach us, sturdier little ships we kept our distance from, and one corvette full of rapid disaster. 

We were outgunned. I am sure of it. Outgunned, against a ship well-plated and filled with zailors I have no desire to meet, not accompanied by only the dozen aboard my own ship. We ran like spooked cats without any rooftops to leap to, ran for days of pursuit with that corvette's lantern always setting up a cold blue light across our stern, and poured fuel into the engine until that d---ed chunk of metal exploded. A zailor told me that we ought to give thanks to Salt that the last explosion spooked the pirates away, and so gave us enough distance to escape in silence and darkness.

Thanks! After the fire it set in the hold! These pages are smudged with the soot of my hands. We are as safe as a lack of immediate attack can make us, still floating, no longer on fire. But still in the water. The spy is down there in the engine room, discovering what can be made of what we have left. I am at my charts, discovering where we can reach from here.

#

_From a suppressed pamphlet distributed at the Wolfstack Docks_

All hail STORM the god of the deeps! Give STORM a name in whispers and water. Give STORM an offering of what swims deep below the passing of the waves. Give STORM an offering of what has bubbled away from its earthen roots. Give STORM an offering of the ship's master, the salt of blood and salt of tears, or give STORM an offering from the ship's master, the salt of blood on salt of blood on salt of blood that pours from those who gave the ship's master command of their lives.

As captains to zailors, whip in hand. As lovers to lovers, with bloody hands. As the wind and ash and snow and sparks and voices in the gale, as the lights crawl up the lines in the dead of the night, so we pray, so we offer, so we give, so we ask. All hail STORM the god of howling. All hail.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

~~All is not well.~~ Very little is well. Our engine growls, pushing us onward. We crawl across this zee, lights off to draw as little power as we can from the work of the machines. My charts and the false-stars have given me a position, and a destination. If, _if_ the old captain's marks were true, we will reach Godfall before the fuel runs out.

We will be out of food well before that point.

The spy told me this in private. I have kept word of it from the crew, so far; with no cook to watch over the supplies and gainsay me, they accept my statement that there were some losses, thus the reduction in rations. The mathematics of the situation comes to me in nightmares. I have checked and checked again, the numbers count down, the results remain. In my dreams, we lose two of the crew to the fire, preserve a crate of food, and my sorrow is all feigned, my joy real, because it would save the rest of us.

Simple math. Very simple math.

I discussed this with the spy. (I will have to tell my few officers about this very soon.) She gave me no contradiction, only the roughest sympathy. She has a way of smiling that has nothing to do with hopes or happiness. "There's no way around it," she said. "The only way out is through." Her small stock of personal supplies--nothing but a few bottles of wine--has already joined the communal store. What can I ask of her but advice? What advice can she give me?

The captain is the god of her crew and her ship, when the Unterzee lies in all directions. This is the only way a ship can function. I am their god, and I must make a decision, very soon.

#

* _And yet I am no god; I will throw all my hopes on one who is. Who might be. Who is._ [Sacrifice to Storm for help. Go to Chapter 47.]  
* _One must suffer for the good of all. It is the only way. We will wait until all supplies are gone, and then draw lots. This is only fair._ [Resort to cannibalism. Go to Chapter 48.]


	47. Chapter 47

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

Perhaps you have noticed the Clay Men who walk the streets of the city, and wondered at their origins. Wonder no longer, for we will tell you outright: they come from Polythreme, a place ruled by the King with the Hundred Hearts. You will seldom find this locale listed as a tourist destination, and with good reason! While it is an island of wonders, these wonders are liable to unsettle good Christian men and women. It is said that the streets themselves speak, as do the walls, the windows, even the wheels of the carriages that roll across those chattering streets. You would do far better to keep your distance, and appreciate the docile, reliable laborers imported from that place. A well-made Clay Man has great strength, perfect obedience, and no imagination. A better coal-hauler could not be designed by human hands!

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

My crew is gone. Scattered to I do not know where, in the force of what brought me here. Sacrifice or taken to alternative salvation, I cannot say, and perhaps I will never know. There were three of us on the ship when it was deposited on the docks of Polythreme.

Not _at_ the docks. On, in a shipyard berth meant for an unnerving new vessel. The sheets of metal destined for that ship's hull still lie in stacks nearby, weeping. I can hear them in here. Here in my bare cabin, as the ship has been stripped entirely. All supplies gone, all fuel gone, every unbolted furnishing and crate and blanket, taken away by the same hand as took my crew. My own personal chest, bolted to the floor, held its contents. Not an Echo to my name, but I have my journal, ink, and logbook. One might almost suspect the gods of the zee of having a sense of humor.

I do not think it was humor that did this to me. The gunner, the spy, and I were the only ones left on the ship, and with the way we made our sacrifice, the blood we used... It is a message of sorts. Or not a message, a response. Set a foot on crumbling brick while climbing a wall, and fall to the ground: is the broken ankle a message? No, only a response to what one did. The gods of the zee are not ones to speak or coddle. They do as they must, and we try our best to understand, to work the levers of the universe towards our goals.

And so, my resources:

A ship, improperly berthed, incurring fines for said berthing;  
A gunner, already seeking new employment, though she believes I do not know;  
A spy, already seeking new passage, with charming honesty on this point;  
A chest of personal effects, worth little;  
A handful of Echoes;  
A zee captain, myself, somewhat experienced, recently unlucky.

Perhaps I will recover from this. I can make my way back home, or take to zee for years on other ships. I could save up for those years, keep an eye out for a pirate ship with salvageable hull--turn pirate myself, and prey on the honest zailors of the Unterzee. The spy might even let me travel with her, as a sort of assistant or bodyguard, while I survey the ports she visits for greater opportunities. There are options before me, none of them leading directly to the course I had set myself.

"A new month is a new beginning," my old employer used to say.

Imagine. I could end up working for him again.

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less financially ruinous conclusion, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	48. Chapter 48

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The oldest of the zailors drew the short straw. Sweetwater Bess, a steady hand, who hired on with me because she had worked beneath me before. "I wanted more of adventure," she said, the straw in her hand. All the crew stood silent around us, faces hidden by darkness, except where the green glow of the running lights caught out a chin here, a nose there, the hollows of eyes. "So many trips to Venderbight! Out here, there's nothing of dust on the tongue. I feel as if I've been a sponge, soaking up moisture again."

She walked to the stern, and closed her eyes. Maybe she was imagining the way the lamp would have looked across the water, if we hadn't turned it off to conserve fuel.

I cut her throat. I am the captain, and god to these people on the zee. The blood poured across my hands, across the stern, across the darkened lamp, across the water where neither she nor I could see, only hear the churn of creatures attracted by its scent. She went silent and calm as if she were only climbing into bed. And none of the crew would meet my gaze, when I turned back towards their green-limned faces. Only the spy.

She gave her last bottle of wine to the zailor selected as cook, and let me be while I washed my hands in a bucket of salt water drawn up from the zee. The crew all moved downstairs as they were able when the cook's call went out, and what did they see there? Nothing I saw. Maybe nothing but the enormous pot, churning away with what had been put inside. Maybe bloody bones, and a folded pile of personal effects that we will return as we always do. I stood in the wheelhouse, staring at my charts, until they brought me a bowl.

Of course I was hungry. We were all hungry. Ravenous. But not ravening. Everything was done exactly as it had to be. We are not monsters, however many surround us out here in the darkness. They are still thrashing alongside our ship, growling in our wake, in hope that we will be driven to another act of despair.

The spy was waiting when I returned to my cabin to change my clothes.

"You should have stripped to shirt alone," she said. "Wouldn't that be more practical, and less sentimental?"

I took off my bloodied coat. "It's not sentiment," I told her. "It's ceremony." 

I keep a lamp in my cabin, which draws nothing from the engine, fueled by an oil unsuitable for the ship. A small luxury for my own writing when the ship runs dark. She had a golden glow beneath that light, and the image on her cheek caught some of that sense, as if she had been lit up in turn from within. "Because of the death?" she asked.

"Because I am captain. Only the captain can do--that." Call it sentiment, perhaps, after all. I can write it, but I could not name it clearly, standing before her, though I think she would not have judged. Or had judged me accurately already, when the knife was out.

"The crew could," she said. "If you were did."

"No," I told her. "The crew could fall on each other like beasts, or murder each other by the numbers. It's different."

We spoke about other things. Less bloody things. I ought to sleep. I ought to have slept hours ago, and soon it will be time to wake, in any case. I don't wish to sleep. I don't wish to write about this anymore. No one will speak of it, except for her. Now that it is all over, we will all pretend this never happened, won't we?

#

_From a letter between the gunner of the Virulent and her lover_

Yes, we had a spot of bother on the trip, but nothing so terrible as you always imagine! We encountered some pirates, and poor old Sweetwater Bess took a shard to the chest that laid her low, but we gave as good as we got, sailed quickly away, and had no trouble after. A few fires put out, but you'll see on my return that I haven't even a new burn to show for it. The captain kept matters well in hand. The loss of Sweetwater Bess is sad, it's true, but every zailor knows these hazards, and she went fast. So you shouldn't worry for me: as a gunner, I'm stored away in one of the best-braced, best-hulled parts of the ship, and so long as this sprightly tub keeps afloat, you can expect me back home, full of new stories.

I wish you wouldn't worry so. Yes, I'm a fretful sleeper when I'm at home in your arms, but that has nothing to do with your bed or my trips. It's only that the steady furniture on land, without the rocking of a ship beneath it, makes me restless at night.

#

[Go to Chapter 49.]


	49. Chapter 49

_From a report to the Admirality, by the Captain of the Virulent_

The requested delivery having been made, the crew was given leave to take some time among the monks, given hardships imposed by damage suffered along the way. The leader of the monks reports that everything is "copacetic" and "sanguine", though I am not certain he was sober at the time that he delivered this commentary. Find enclosed the list of other ships viewed at port, as well as an account of the pirate ship we encountered on the way.

While I realize it is not the business of the Admirality to mind the affairs of every merchant ship on these waters, I would recommend deploying some resources towards the capture or destruction of the ship mentioned in that account, given the serious damage it seems capable of and its unusual persistence...

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

We sat together in the wheelhouse before she left the ship, on the pretext of consulting charts and wrapping up our business there. Half the crew had already gone ashore that vast fallen stone of the ceiling, to make merry with the monks. The rest I will send in stages, leaving the ship lightly crewed, and mostly by officers. Some of the crew, I am sure, will not return. We cannot quite look at each other, unless we have the most formulaic words to exchange. Some will return, having made merry with the monks until they have convinced themselves everything is forgotten. The zee keeps its secrets, doesn't it? That's what they say in that chapel, ~~and I should have prayed~~ but nothing comes of listening to superstition at length. It leads to a different sort of madness.

Some of the crew will accompany me back home, and find excuses to board other ships. One with luckier captains, or simply captains who do not see blood splashing into the darkness on looking at them. But the spy leaves here, and so we could actually sit together, and speak. As candidly as ever, I suppose.

"You think I mean to pick their pockets," she told me, "but what does a monk keep in his pockets? Nothing! Nothing, or flasks of beer, with these ones. They would be more surprised to reach in and find something there." She smiled, and now I am sure that some quite specific monks will do exactly that in the near future. "Don't think you're abandoning me. I land on my feet, like a cat. Exactly like my father. Though no one drops counts out of windows. Maybe they should. Imagine what it would do for politics."

One can only imagine. We spoke at some length, longer than charts and business could justify, though none of the crew will mention it. (Among the many things they will not mention.) There was a great deal of talking around topics, in all of that, as if we could only approach them sidelong. Tacking to sail against the wind, as ships used to on more brightly lit seas. Her mother and the darkness and blood on the water. Regardless. We spoke, and we came to an end of speaking, and she left.

Two monks have already sent word that they wish to take up a less monkish lifestyle. It seems that even beer and brawls can become tedious to a man, after enough indulgence in both, and one of them claims he has uneasy dreams of their stony home.

He will fit into the crew well, or what is left of it now. There are sounds in the night every time a zailor is sleeping, and that will not change simply because we have loaded more supplies and adjusted our numbers.

The sounds in the night are almost always us. It's for the best.

#

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	50. Chapter 50

_From the journal of an Admirality clerk_

Another long, dull day at the office, but for a moment of sunshine in the morning. (Sunshine! I think I will never see it again. Whatever possessed my father to bring me to the Neath? Whatever possessed me to stay? I'll save up the coin and return to the surface one of these days, won't I just? If only clerks were paid more, or offered more interesting opportunities on the side.) A fetching woman was waiting for some matter or another with the Admiral, right outside the door of my office, and after several long moments decided to step inside and have a few words with me.

A strange woman, and probably not quite respectable: she smiles more than the well-bred do in the presence of strangers, and that butterfly tattoo on her cheek would never be accepted in high society. But she has such a way of speaking! A Bohemian? She seemed like the sort of woman who would declaim something licentious at a secret poetry reading, the sort I ought not attend if I want to keep my position. She stood by my desk and talked about forms, work, the comings and goings of the office, nothing dangerous at all, but I can imagine her being dangerous. Delightfully dangerous. 

And then the moment was over all too soon, and off she was for some meeting with the Admiral and one of the endless stream of zee captains that come to hand him their equally endless reports. Do they ever think of the clerks who have to inspect those hand-written logs, transcribe them, sort them, file them, update the cross-reference books? No, not once. I don't think that captain even looked at me as she left, though the delightful woman with the tattoo winked at me as she passed. That I'm sure of.

All tedious, the rest of the day. And worse yet, my wallet has gone missing. The fault of some street urchin, I'm sure. The constables ought to do something about those grubby menaces.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The Admirality has given me a spy. A charming spy, to be sure, and one who claims she is nothing of the sort, only a woman with a message to deliver, but if she weren't a spy she wouldn't be delivering mysterious messages to distant groups of monks. What do monks have to do with the interests of the Admirality? "Nothing," she told me merrily. "They said I would have a quiet journey without any questions ahead, but I like this better already. You'll be disappointed if you expect spying from me, though. I haven't even packed a notebook. Besides, the Admirality doesn't believe in freelancers. Not the way zailors believe in their gods."

She threw her luggage into her cabin, and is now questioning the crew about the engines. If I thought I had done anything to incline the Admiral's opinions against me, I might worry at such discussion.

The Admiral's clerks demanded my route, and have provided me with exactly enough fuel and supplies, beyond what we had on board already, for the full trip. All payment beyond that waits for my successful return. The margin on this lies uncomfortably close to the division between success and disaster. I am not a merchant, nor aware of any particular high-priced market among monks for the sorts of goods I can acquire easily before setting out. For the better success of this voyage, I will quietly...

#

* _...stock up on extra fuel, as all will be lost if we end up adrift in the zee._ [Buy more fuel. Go to Chapter 45.]  
* _...see if anyone will pay for deliveries to Godfall, for the sake of extra Echoes on hand in case of emergency._ [Take some valuable packages on board. Go to Chapter 51.]


	51. Chapter 51

_From a letter between a zailor and her son_

And you would like the pretty lady who's joined us for this journey! She tells jokes and showed me how to adjust a gasket on the engine to fix a dribbling leak we've had such trouble with, and she has a pair of pretty wings painted on her cheek. I drew a picture on the back of the page so you can see, too. It's always so cheery when we first set out! You shouldn't worry at all, but mind what Papa says, except about the key.

We're traveling without much in the hold, so me and One-Eyed Alice went down there to slingshot lead slugs at rats. They add well to the rations, and our cook has a recipe that makes them a real delight on long journeys, after too much biscuit. Even Mummy doesn't like nothing but hardtack and gruel and salt pork, if it is pork, which Mummy isn't so sure on some days. The next time I'm home I'll show you the recipe. You can ask your little friends from the alleys to help you with finding good rats.

And do you know what Mummy found in the hold? Well, Mummy doesn't know either! One of our shots bounced off the special cargo the Virulent is carrying, and made such a queer little noise, all rattling and banging inside! You would laugh, if you had a toy that made sounds like that. We told the captain about it, and she said that the packages would get us no price at all on the other end if we pulled them open, so I suppose we'll never know what's inside. That's a zailor's life, my dear boy, all full of mystery. Get your teacher to spell out that word for you so that you can write it out yourself. When you're older, you'll surely work in a place with fewer mysteries than on zee-ships! Or maybe at the Department of Mysteries? Keep to your letters, and all will be well.

I'll post this from a sentry ship we stop at tomorrow. Mummy sends all her love, and a reminder to keep the key to the gin cabinet hidden until she's back, that's a good boy!

#

[The captain leaves the packages alone. Go to Chapter 52.]  
[The captain opens up the packages. Go to Chapter 53.]


	52. Chapter 52

_From the logbook of the Contumacious_

Zailor on watch reported a bright flash on the horizon. Hardly needed reporting, as the sudden illumination and subsequent roar of noise woke up everyone on board. Set out north-northeast immediately at three quarters speed, for the best combination of caution and haste. Little difficulty locating the original point, given the lingering red glow.

Arrived to find little more than floating debris, some still flaming. An entire ship, gone up in an explosion, for reasons unknown. Salvaged a few floating barrels, crates, personal effects from what wasn't on fire, and one survivor, dangerously burned. If she lives long enough, will drop her off at the next port. If she wakes, we'll ask for more detail. Ship's physician is keeping watch on her for now.

May the dark waves that took the rest give them a peace down in the salt. Turned back to our original heading.

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less flammable conclusion, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]


	53. Chapter 53

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I suppose the bad news is that we won't be seeing any special payment for the deliver of _that_ cargo. As we have instead avoided an explosion that might have scuttled the entire ship, I will focus on the good news.

Nearly snapped my pen, writing that. _Good_ news! I'm not accustomed to calling the discovery of a messy clockwork and dynamite contraption that. But our spy-guest assured me, upon examining it, that it would have run through its clockwork timer and put an enormous hole in our hull if we had left it be. Or even worse, with how close the package had been stowed to the engine room. From now on, nothing but known supplies will be stored over there. Hard tack may be tedious after weeks at zee, but it has never sunk a ship. So far as I know.

Couldn't keep the news of the device we found from the crew. Not when one of them had reported it, and I had to call in help for the safe disassembly. The spy was handy enough with a wrench that--no, I won't suspect her of having planted the item, or lied about when it would go off. A proper spy avoids attention, rather than creating elaborate schemes to look useful to people hired to transport her about. (Though she claims she's not a spy.) And I was the one who went looking for extra cargo, which perhaps I should have noticed was so quickly and easily found. As if someone had been waiting for an excuse to deploy such a device, if only they could discover which ship to put it on.

"I can't think of why," said the spy, after we had searched all the packages and assured the safety of the ship. (Safety from this hazard, this moment, in any case.) "There's no reason for anyone to care that I'm on a little trip, or that you are." She was lying, and we both knew it, but it seemed easiest to let that sort of lie stand. Invited her back to my cabin to split a bottle of my wine, by way of congratulation for our continued living, and thanks for her help.

She agreed immediately. "Because you're full of questions," she said. "Have you ever been to Whither? Nothing but questions, there. It'll drive a body mad. Just try to find out what you want to know, however simple it is! In any case, you do have questions, don't you?"

I allowed that I had many questions, but also the ability to contemplate them in quiet, given the twin restraints of wisdom and propriety. To which she said, "Propriety isn't everything. I've known people who are very _proper_ , and I'd rather have the alternative. You've met the ones who want to follow all the rules, even the rules no one wrote down! There's nothing more tedious than that kind of--what would you call it? Sincerity? Or integrity. Imagine being the same person all your life, beginning to end."

I raised various alternatives that had no appeal. "See," she said, "you talk about it as if it's binary. Order and chaos, masters and minions, honesty and lies. Well, there are solid things, and things that aren't so solid. Engines and dreams, if you will. You'll find that if you look long enough, people are a bit of each. I suppose it's not so bad if they want to cling to one side. It's like parents, don't you think? Do you favor your father or your mother?"

We disposed of the bottle of wine in conversation such as this. Too much to record in detail. She asked after various ports I had visited, as if she cared only a little for the answers, and I think she cared rather more than she let on. If she is not a spy, she is the next thing to one. I find that this doesn't bother me.

#

[Go to Chapter 46.]


	54. Chapter 54

[This page intentionally left blank.]


	55. Chapter 55

_From the memo book of a daring naturalist_

To Do:

* Hire a ship for the expedition  
* Dissecting knives need sharpening!  
* New adventuring trousers, to be ready on return: investigate ratskin options  
* Remind Martha to feed the specimens, cat, child during my absence  
* Tea with Uncle  
* Have urchins removed from roof, double-check window latches  
* Attend evening lecture at the university, if time???  
* Have Martha pack trunks for expedition  
* Retrieve child from urchin gang

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

An urchin interrupted me at breakfast, having popped in through a window as if I had left that open to invite small guests, rather than to invite a breeze through a stuffy boarding room. The small child of unknown gender intimated that it had been sent by a wealthy patron looking to hire a ship for an expedition of--well, there were several adjectives appended, some of them more plausible than others. When I indicated that very few wealthy patrons send grubby urchins through windows to fetch zee-captains, I was presented with a reasonably clean calling card bearing the name of a naturalist even I have heard of before. Her exploits reach the newspapers from time to time, and I have seen one of her travel narratives for sale in the bookstalls.

"She's bound to hire some fusty old geezer," said the urchin, "but I like your ship's name, and you'll do better. Show up by noon and she'll figure that you're the one, knowing how her mind works." This fine speech was delivered with one finger stuck up its nose. Not an inspiring opening, but I decided to humor the child, being in need of some work for the ship.

Which brings me to the status of the Virulent as it sits in dock now: abuzz with noise, as that renowned naturalist has her people and equipment loaded. She's a direct sort of woman, a decade beyond me and in charge of her own mind. "I expect you know your business," she told me in her drawing room this morning, "as I know mine. I mean to hunt monsters, and I have the weapons to do it properly. All I need is a fast ship, small enough to not draw too much attention. If you will accept this commission, and bring me to the monsters, I won't be the troublesome sort that challenges your authority in front of the crew. Only bring me to the jilly-fluke, as best you can, and I will pay handsomely."

A fair bargain. What a jilly-fluke is, I have no idea. But monsters are dumb creatures, if vicious ones, and should be easily managed with such equally vicious weapons as the naturalist has brought on board.

#

[Go to Chapter 56.]


	56. Chapter 56

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Strong zailing toward the east. Lookout spotted an auroral megalops north-northeast. Distant screams heard from the same direction, briefly.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The crew is full of good cheer, despite the job at hand. I'll credit that to this naturalist's stock of spirits, and her willingness to distribute them at any confirmed sighting of a beast on the horizon. We have already noted three megalopses and what might've been a juvenile form of one of those massive eels, plus a colony of zee-bats that might or might not count by her standards. Dinner last night was animated on this topic.

This morning brought red waters and cheers from the crew: they had netted, speared, and drawn up to the deck a strange eyeless beast, some kind of zee-serpent with trailing fins and dull teeth. The cook had already carved off steaks to serve up for lunch when I arrived to examine the results, and consider best how to chide the crew for a bit too much sanguine alacrity. It wouldn't do for them to become undisciplined, or careless, simply because the naturalist encourages them in this direction.

"Well, Captain," she said at my approach, being already on the deck, "you see what we've found. I took my notes, and I'll preserve some of the scales, but I don't need any of the rest. I've seen these before. What I want is a jilly-fluke, beyond all things. Though I suppose a whole series of smaller creatures would give me enough for a book. Would you like to see my manuscript?"

I begged off the task, claiming that duties pressed me, and escaped further conversation. However, her implied options are ones I ought to consider seriously. If we chase after a series of beasts as the crew sights them, we'll easily supply her with the material she wants, bring her home without much incident, and be paid well enough. But if we go hunting news of this "jilly-fluke", we might return to port with the kind of news that creeps up to the top of the newspaper front page. Or we might return to port with nothing at all of note. Certainly I'll have a drunker crew with the first approach, given the evidence at hand. With the second, well, a disappointed crew, or perhaps fewer of them afterward, depending on how dangerous this jilly-fluke might be. But what prestige it would bring!

There will be plenty of time to consider that later, after I try this excellent serpent-steak that has just been brought to my cabin, with a good bottle of fungal wine at its side.

#

* [Hunt smaller monsters. Go to Chapter 57.]  
* [Focus on finding the jilly-fluke. Go to Chapter 58.]


	57. Chapter 57

_From the memo book of a daring naturalist_

Supplies destroyed/lost since last update:

* 5 nets (2 probably repairable)  
* 16 harpoons  
* one large crate of torpedo parts  
* one small crate of flares  
* left hand of over-eager crewwoman (probably not repairable)  
* 6 cases of wine  
* second-best dissection knife (lost overboard)

Supplies acquired at brief port stop:

* 1 net (dubious quality)  
* enormous spool of top quality fishing line  
* one small crate of flares  
* cat of dubious origin (said to increase crew morale)  
* 3 crates of pickled herring _not_ for use on new cat  
* new hat for ship's captain, by way of apology

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

...and then the bell rang to alert us of yet another beast sighting. Dismissed my handful of officers and returned to deck to direct the pursuit of the next: this, another megalops of no impressive size. I had not realized, before we began looking for these creatures, how many thrived in this zee.

All the same, we seem to have cleared these tranquil waters of the creatures. The naturalist claims that the blood of the butchery draws in scavengers of no great importance, but frightens away other beasts of similar size. That particular instance of the bell proved to be a mistaken sighting. Chastised the zailor for misidentifying a floating clump of zee-wrack.

The naturalist arrived at my cabin, where I was studying charts and old reports that might discuss appropriate monster-hunting locals, at mid-afternoon. "I heard something at the last port stop," she said, "but you're not going to like it."

She was right. What would possess a body to go hunting in Gaider's Mourn for _zee monsters_? We are not kitted out for dealing with pirates, even with the additional firepower she has brought to the ship for this expedition; those fletchettes will do nicely for shredding flesh, and very little against the hull of a predatory ship. Perhaps that is exactly why the area is said to host a lurking colony of jillyfleurs with unusual coloring.

She left me unconvinced, and with her usual airy assurance that I ought to do as I see fit, being the captain of this ship. Which I am. I would not take the Virulent into a nest of pirates and monsters at once for all the scintillack in Port Cecil.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," she said merrily, as she left. And I am no coward: I am exercising perfectly reasonable caution. Yet...she makes a point of sorts. What kind of mark will I make in the lists of zee-captains if I return to London with nothing but a few megalops shells and stories of fighting off bats?

#

* _Perhaps we could take a careful look at this one nest of jillyfleurs, with lights off._ [Hunt more monsters in Gaider's Mourn. Go to Chapter 59.]  
* _More of a mark than I'll make if I never return home at all._ [Keep to safer waters. Go to Chapter 60.]


	58. Chapter 58

_From the memo book of a daring naturalist_

Ports visited, seeking jilly-fluke information:

* Venderbight  
* Mutton Island  
* Hunter's Keep  
* Abbey Rock

Ports with delightful entertainment worthy of a shore-leave:

* Hunter's Keep

Unsettling story topics recently heard:

* 1 pig  
* 1 parson  
* 3 zailors  
* the nature of dreams

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

Perhaps we should have started with Abbey Rock, but who would have expected nuns to have news of the outside world? Especially news of the Unterzee, when they are sequestered enough to offer blessings in exchange for snippets of recent news from London. Or perhaps I should have expected nuns who spend that much time firing rifles at smaller beasts of their island to have a keen interest in the larger beasts of the zee.

"We've heard of it," said the Mother Superior, while the naturalist and I stood outside the gate: she was not a sufficient enthusiast to let us inside, but fond enough of the naturalist's books to condescend to speak with us in person. "By other names, though 'jilly-fluke' would do just as well. Strange stories from those who encountered it. People saying they were consumed. No, not _almost_ consumed, but that they were consumed in fact. Couldn't get a straight story out of any of them. I'd tell you to keep your distance, if you can't destroy it." The nun's hand rested gently on the barrel of her rifle. "Or report back afterward. Maybe you'll be able to speak more of its weaknesses than the last batch."

We left without making promises on this point. An unsettling warning, regardless: what consumes and leaves the consumed wandering about to report on the experience afterward? At least the nuns gave us good directions to the last sighting of the creature. The course is set, and the engines rumble as we pursue the fabled jilly-fluke, whatever it might be.

#

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Lookout spotted a strange mass on the horizon. Heaving on the water like zee-wrack, twice the size of the ship. Naturalist requested closer inspection.

#

* _Approaching with weapons ready._ [Approach the mass closely. Go to Chapter 63.]  
* _Approaching slightly._ [Approach the mass, but keep a cautious distance. Go to Chapter 64.]


	59. Chapter 59

_From The Surfacer's Guide to the Wonders of the Neath_

You will never find reason to visit Gaider's Mourn. In fact, should you decide to take a voyage upon the zee, and discover that your captain intends to travel through this place, you should disembark immediately and lodge a strong complaint with the port authorities. The ominous name attaches to a stretch of water pierced by stalactites and infested with pirates. Those pernicious burglars of the water are not only found in the sunny seas of your homeland! Any captain who zails into these waters is taking not only his own life, but that of his crew and passengers, into his hands. How could you trust such a man? You must suspect him of ulterior motives--of fiendish intentions--in short, of all the worst possible goals.

The name might also come up if you purchase a set of charming memoirs by a reputable lady who was the young daughter of a noble pirate who preyed only on the wicked. These books may be found in all the best bookshops of London, though we charge you not to take the stories too _seriously_...

#

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Lookouts spotted flashes on the horizon. Examination by glass revealed a ship entangled with a monstrous jillyfleur. Ship appears to be one of the larger pirates of this area; jillyfleur appears to be much larger than usual for its kind. Combat continues ahead to the south-east. Approaching with caution.

#

* _Will spray the jillyfleur with fletchettes once in range._ [Save the pirates from the beast. Go to Chapter 61.]  
* _Will maintain a safe distance._ [Wait for the fight to resolve itself. Go to Chapter 62.]


	60. Chapter 60

_From the logbook of the Virulent_

Another megalops hauled on board. The crew is fed and satisfied. Supplies and fuel holding well.

#

_From the memo book of a daring naturalist_

Possible strategies:

* ~~Speak expansively of fame and fortune~~  
* ~~Bring a bottle of wine to the cabin~~  
* Offer more funds while hinting at even greater fortunes back home  
* Play up personal connections to exciting people  
* ~~Accentuate air of mystery?~~  
* ~~Frank, direct proposal after dinner~~

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

We have now run two days since our last sighting of a beast worth pursuit. Most of the crew has recovered from inconvenient hangovers, and they go about their work in a reasonable kind of quiet. I find it pleasant zailing, if a little dull. The Virulent smells excessively of beastly innards, and will need a thorough scrubbing at our next stop in port. That, and some repairs to the hull, given our repeated encounters with beasts that object to being shot, stabbed, netted, and hauled on board for dissection. As complaints go, this is minor; the meals have been excellent on this voyage.

The naturalist came to my cabin an hour ago, to suggest once more a rather daring attempt at Gaider's Mourn. I turned her down as gently and sensibly as I could, while suggesting a weapons load more suited to steel than flesh if she wished to take a subsequent expedition into such dangerous waters. She spoke of various zee-captains she has known who would have completed such expeditions; I noted the number of them who are now among the Drownies, or otherwise mysteriously vanished at zee. And then she lingered afterward for some time, talking of nothing in particular, until I suggested she return to her dissection and leave me to my charts.

A fine naturalist, to be sure, but I am not always quite certain what she wants. This surprises me, given how direct she is in monster matters.

Nonetheless, it seems nearly time to return home. Perhaps we will encounter more beasts on the way. She says she is pleased with the haul from this expedition, so I have no fear that she'll take a bad report to other future clients. In all, a quite pleasant voyage, especially compared to some I could name.

#

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	61. Chapter 61

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The last several hours have been nothing I expected when setting out on this expedition. Which is to say--there was more to this than tangling with phosphorescent crabs.

We encountered a peculiar sight as we skulked into Gaider's Mourn, stern light turned off, though not an unprecedented one: a ship already wrapped in combat with a monster of the zee. More unusual, though, was the monster itself, being an enormous jillyfleur of a truly startling viridian hue, with its drifting tentacles wrapped firmly around the hull of the ship. Those long stinging strands were hunting not only across the deck, but prying at doors to the innards of the ship itself, and we heard the shrieks of crew being pulled out. Shrieks that dimmed as the numbing effects of those tentacles took hold, and then--well. I am glad that I turned my glass away to examine the ship in more detail, rather than the conclusion of the monstrous jillyfleur's rapine.

The ship put me into some consternation for a moment. It was none other than the Kite Of Malta. A notorious pirate ship, large and vicious enough that ships of my size can usually do nothing but stoke the engines higher and hope light hulls are better for flight than they are at holding off cannonballs. What better fate for such a terrible predator of the zee, than to be pulled down into the depths by a predator more naturally inclined to such viciousness? You cannot hate a zee-monster for devouring the innocent: it is, as the naturalist has so often cheerfully said, what they are meant to do. Every zailor aboard that pirate vessel deserved to be so devoured, more than the honest captains and crews those pirates had sent to cold depths below the waves.

And yet the peculiar fading screams reminded me of a certain...call it natural instinct as well. That of human against monster, thinking being against beast, zailor in hand with zailor against those creatures that would gladly pull any of our fragile steel hulls down below. I set the crew to the guns, and advanced with moderate haste. Pirates, one and all, deserved to hang, for what little good that method of execution does in these realms: but none of them deserved to become part of a monstrous creature that would only grow more dangerous for having consumed the wicked as well as the innocent.

We drew near. We fired. My fine crew cut ichorous channels across that jillyfleur, and it responded with rage, or confusion--who can tell with such a beast? Suffice to say that the battle was long, and hard-fought, and did serious damage to my own ship as well as the one the monster had already embraced. We all made fine account of ourselves. Lost two men to the depths of the beast. Saw the naturalist cut through a tentacle lashing itself about a crewwoman with her own pearl-handled dissecting knife, and save her thereby.

At the end, there were two ships still afloat, and the naturalist descending on a lifeboat to capture what she could of the jillyfleur's remains for her notes before it vanished entirely under the waves. Far too large to make more than samples onto our deck, that, and we were sufficiently damaged that I had no great desire to offer assistance beyond that point.

At this point the pirates hailed us. Civility and common humanity demanded I respond, whatever caution might suggest. I sent my surgeon to them; they sent me their captain. ~~He~~ ~~She~~ ~~They~~ Their captain is called the Kite, as if embodying the ship itself: a tall, rangy person of dark complexion and bright eyes. Eyes nearly as bright as those sharp white teeth. "What a cunning little ship this is," said the captain, the instant foot was laid on my deck. "Set for monsters? You must be carrying--ah, down there in the boat, engaging in dissection. How like her. Someone should have warned her about this area. It's so careless to wander through Gaider's Mourn when all you want to murder is harmless little jellies."

I noted the size, ferocity, and inclinations of the jillyfleur we had so recently destroyed, to which the captain responded with an even sharper smile. "What an ending that would have been, to go down to a beast like that! No one would have believed its size, and so they would say my ship was taken in by tedious little monsters. Unworthy opponents. You've saved my reputation, Madame, which I hold more dearly than my life. Should we discuss repayment?"

We adjourned to my cabin to discuss what a pirate might offer respectable zailors, at some length.

#

_From the memo book of a daring naturalist_

Pirates! Why did it have to be pirates?

Note to self: sponsor more anti-pirate initiatives.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The Kite of Malta has peeled away again, after escorting us to the very edge of the sentry ship's lights. "You're unlikely to sink here," the captain told me, about to return to that pirate ship. "And if you do, these honest souls will pull you out of the water. What fun!" The captain's teeth remain sharp and bright, and never more so than when matched to a sardonic smile. "We may meet again if you continue frequenting those waters. Or certain others that I won't name. It would ruin the surprise. Won't we enjoy seeing how that ends, if we do?"

I do not trust that pirate, or that smile, or anyone on board that ship. But when I returned to my cabin to jot down a few more notes about the experience, I found a hard lump beneath the padding of my bed. A small metal box, locked, and I had to call in a zailor of dubious background to pick the lock for me. The captain of the Kite of Malta left no key behind: a pirate's little joke, that. But inside were sapphires, diamonds, and rubies of a dark red with a fiery light inside. Enough to cover repairs, and then some, I would say.

Perhaps I won't mention that box to the naturalist. She has been chattering constantly about her discoveries from that jillyfleur, and can easily be convinced, I'm certain, to cover repairs herself.

#

[This is the end to someone's story, but not the captain's. Return to Chapter 2 for another expedition.]


	62. Chapter 62

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

We encountered a peculiar sight as we skulked into Gaider's Mourn, stern light turned off, though not an unprecedented one: a ship already wrapped in combat with a monster of the zee. More unusual, though, was the monster itself, being an enormous jillyfleur of a truly startling viridian hue, with its drifting tentacles wrapped firmly around the hull of the ship. Those long stinging strands were hunting not only across the deck, but prying at doors to the innards of the ship itself, and we heard the shrieks of crew being pulled out. Shrieks that dimmed as the numbing effects of those tentacles took hold, and then--well. I am glad that I turned my glass away to examine the ship in more detail, rather than the conclusion of the monstrous jillyfleur's rapine.

The ship put me into some consternation for a moment. It was none other than the Kite Of Malta. A notorious pirate ship, large and vicious enough that ships of my size can usually do nothing but stoke the engines higher and hope light hulls are better for flight than they are at holding off cannonballs. What better fate for such a terrible predator of the zee, than to be pulled down into the depths by a predator more naturally inclined to such viciousness? You cannot hate a zee-monster for devouring the innocent: it is, as the naturalist has so often cheerfully said, what they are meant to do. Every zailor aboard that pirate vessel deserved to be so devoured, more than the honest captains and crews those pirates had sent to cold depths below the waves.

And yet the peculiar fading screams reminded me of a certain...call it natural instinct as well. That of human against monster, thinking being against beast, zailor in hand with zailor against those creatures that would gladly pull any of our fragile steel hulls down below.

Another pirate zailor disappeared into the jellied innards of the beast, and I heard at my side one of my own zailors whispering prayers to the gods of the zee. Thus resolved, I kept a decent distance, and waited for the two monsters of the water to exhaust themselves on each other. The sounds were...distressing, I must admit. But eventually those sounds faded, and the ichorous beast settled its torn remains upon the pirate ship as if resting at last from an onerous burden.

At that moment, I called for fletchette sprays, nets, and harpoons. We finished off the beast before it could regroup. It was, after all, only a jillyfleur, if vast and viridian: worn out by the armor-shattering projectiles of the pirates, and then sated on their bodies, it could barely lift a tentacle to defend itself.

The naturalist is giddy with delight over the body. "Damaged," she cried, "but not destroyed! And look how it's propped up by that ship, when ours would never hold it!" She and her assistant are swarming all over the corpse with notebooks and dissection knives in hand.

As for me, I am about to take a small party--one trusted zailor, one officer--over to the uncrewed Kite of Malta, notorious predator of the zee, and find out what those human beasts gathered for themselves inside.

#

_From the memo book of a daring naturalist_

Possible names for the new jillyfleur species:

* jillygrass  
* jellied mossbeast  
* jilly-go-clover  
* viridian jillyfleur  
* borealfleurial

...bother, might as well ask the child for suggestions on return. Who has time for naming things when they need dissecting?

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

The Kite of Malta took heavy damage, but not enough to keep it from limping into port. The difficulty will only be to bring it safely out of Gaider's Mourn without another attack by pirates (or more of those d--n green jillyfleurs), and into London port without being fired on by any naval defenses there. We have prepared a white flag to run up high once we're safely out of pirate-infested waters, which may help with the latter; for the former I can trust on nothing but turning out what lights we can, quiet running, and luck.

I will have to rename the ship, once it is fixed up. It wouldn't do to have other ships taking me for a notorious pirate. But what a find! Its belly full of silk and linen, wine and gems, crates of treasures looted from every port of the zee and every type of ship that ever dared to leave port.

The naturalist says that she will make her name even better known for this discovery. She is welcome to such fame: I will take mine from this ship, its contents, and being part of destroying its crew, in my own way. We will all raise a toast tonight to the captain of the Kite of the Malta: may that notorious pirate lie trapped forever below the waters, or in the acidic center of the beast!

#

[Go to Chapter 12.]


	63. Chapter 63

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I have been consumed.

No. Nonsense. I am here. I am sitting in my cabin, pen in hand. My hand is clean and dry. Let us stick with the facts, captain! I cannot have been consumed. We only approached the beast, and have now left it behind.

The beast. Yes.

I have never seen such a beast at zee before. It was a heaving mass over the surface the water, showing the movement of every wave, as if an oil slick had expanded to vast proportions. And yet despite its rippling, the oily rainbows of its jellied flesh extended _downward_ into the water, being no simple spill of oil, but an enormous sort of cube floating with its own top exactly at the zee's surface. There were...things...inside that mass. Things that moved within. It had long, reaching limbs, as if the flippers on a whale had been extended again and again and again in length, flat and drifting gently across the water. Reaching towards _us_.

They slid up the sides of the Virulent. Over the hull. Through the doors. Was there screaming? I don't recall. No one in the crew is screaming now. We are all in our places, on the ship. The Virulent is as she should be, steaming towards home. Our lights are bright. Our engines rumble as they should. We are all quite well. Dry and safe and in our places.

The jilly-fluke took me. (Did it take them? Do I ask?) It crept around me. There were sounds that escaped my mouth, but I no longer recall what I said. Those limbs, attenuated flippers or flattened tentacles or objects with no name or sound, they wrapped around me and took me inside. Down through the colors that never appeared in the books of my childhood. What colors! What colors! What _colors_ , pouring inside me and through me. I was a thing moving inside it. All the colors of the jilly-fluke (what a ridiculous name for such a vast and perfect creature) poured through me. I spoke in vermillion, I cried out in viridian, chartreuse words poured out of my mouth across my fellows.

No. This makes no sense. I was not inside it. Surely I was not inside that. It never spoke to me. It knocked me off the ship, and the crew hauled me back. It never touched me beyond that jostle. It never took me inside. It never drew us within, or nestled us together in a row, or poured colored thoughts through us until we all sang in the same hue.

Certainly a monster would never have returned us to our places, one by one.

Perhaps its limbs, like certain mushrooms, produces hallucinations. Yes. This would explain everything. That is all. A hallucination, lingering, obscuring the mundane reality of what happened. Regardless. We sail home. The naturalist must be pleased with what she has seen, and ask for no more. I will not seek any stranger beasts of the zee than that.

#

_From the memo book of a daring naturalist_

Science. Science. Science. Naturalism!

if I write it often enough that will settle into my head again properly. Naturalism! Science. Naturalism. Facts. The pursuit of facts. Write it a hundred times, as you did when you were a schoolgirl. The pursuit of facts in the natural world is naturalism. I will pursue that, and no other flights of fancy.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

It lingers in my dreams. That hallucination, or whatever it was that happened inside the creature.

We weren't inside. It touched us with some sort of contact poison that caused hallucinations. That's all. One with lingering effects. We are nearly back home, and all will be well. All manner of things will be well.

But I cannot forget it. I cannot scour those images from my mind. Images? Sounds? The taste of unknown colors in my mouth. The sensation of colors slipping across my skin.

I must drive this from my mind, if I wish to ever return to zee. 

#

* _A hard night of drinking and carousing on the docks will suffice. Drink can remove any memory, however unsettling._ [Go to Chapter 2 and choose another expedition.]  
* _I will seek out others who were 'consumed' and reassure myself that this is nothing but a flight of fancy._ [Pursue more information about the jilly-fluke. Go to Chapter 65.]


	64. Chapter 64

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I have never seen such a beast at zee before, and hope to never see one again, especially any closer than that. It was a heaving mass over the surface the water, showing the movement of every wave, as if an oil slick had expanded to vast proportions. And yet despite its rippling, the oily rainbows of its jellied flesh extended _downward_ into the water, being no simple spill of oil, but an enormous sort of cube floating with its own top exactly at the zee's surface. There were...things...inside that mass. I do not know what. Things that moved within. It had long, reaching limbs, as if the flippers on a whale had been extended again and again and again in length, flat and drifting gently across the water. Reaching towards _us_.

The naturalist ceased all complaints about how far off I kept the ship when she saw how close one of those flippers had come to us. "Sensible," she said to me, putting away her dissection knives with only a briefly wistful sigh. "Disappointing, but thoroughly sensible. You must keep us all alive; it is what you've been hired for, as much as any transportation, and you do it so well. At least I may take notes from here. Unless perhaps a small boat... Well, no. Not a boat. Though I'll have something soft flung in that direction, and see how it reacts." Onward in this manner she went, discussing the zee-monster's habits, reactions, appearance.

She has been taking notes and conducting conversations with her assistant for hours, now. The jilly-fluke itself, if that is what we mean to call this, remains quiet and still in the water. I am keeping look-outs posted and the engines at the ready: if it begins to move suddenly, so will we.

#

_From the memo book of a daring naturalist_

Blast it all. I have made the discovery of a lifetime. I will simply _ask_.

#

_From the journal of the Captain of the Virulent_

I was plotting our course back home when the naturalist came to speak with me. Empty-handed, this time, and quite direct. "I have made the discovery of a lifetime," she told me, and I allowed that this was so, in the expectation that she would go on to ask me once more to approach the creature more closely. It already lay leagues at our back; I had no intention of remaining in proximity to that jilly-fluke while I was sleeping, no matter which officer I left on watch.

"The discovery of a lifetime," she repeated, "and only because you would sail me in circles at my request until I found the right information, sail me close enough to observe--and not so close as to be consumed! I respect your experience and the advice you give." Fortunately, she did not continue in this vein at any further length, which would have drawn us both into embarrassment. "In short, I wish to continue our acquaintance. All aside from what I pay your for this! Blast. I should have said this after I paid. Never mind that." She folded her arms solidly across her chest. "I want you to be my captain, and allow me to be your naturalist. Together, we can emblazon both our names through all the journals and newspapers of the Neath. You could give my child a bit of teaching in a trade more respectable than pickpocketing, and I could give you funding, good dinner conversation, company."

Here, she hesitated. She is not usually a woman to hesitate, in my experience of her.

"Do tell me," she said, "what you would like. Maybe after we are back home. Less awkward that way. I won't hold either answer against you. It has been quite the trip." She left my cabin, and left me bemused. It would be a narrower life than the one I planned to pursue with this ship, with a single patron. A little much like serving another employer, in some ways. And yet the distances I could reach, with a steady source of funds! The ports we could visit, in pursuit of her strange beasts! (The danger we would face in that pursuit? Oh, yes, that's of note as well.) And I do find her company at dinner pleasant enough, even if she is not one I would have thought to seek out in a more personal manner.

#

* _But I cannot constrain myself in this manner._ [Go to Chapter 2 and take on another expedition.]  
* _Perhaps the two of us should speak again, once we're in port._ [Pursue a more permanent relationship with the naturalist. Go to Chapter 11.]


	65. Chapter 65

_From a report to the Admirality, by the Captain of the Alacritous_

Several zailors in this port offered me the same disturbing rumor, which I would count as implausible if it had not come from many of them. Their captain had loaded up their ship with strange zailors from a variety of other ships, and set out to zee without any clear goal or commission. The captain then abandoned half her old crew in this port, without warning: she sent them ashore for "shore leave" and then sailed away the moment they had left the docks. I copy exactly the words of one of them:

"It was all the ones taken by the jilly-fluke. That's who she kept. That's who she took from other ships. They're all off to find it again. Join up with it. We aren't supposed to know, but I heard them speaking. I thought they were talking about nightmares! But now I know better. About colors, and tastes. Nonsense, I thought, until she left us. Mark my words: you stay away from that thing. Don't touch that monster. It'll get into your head. It'll take you back, even when you think it's free."

See the attached papers containing drawings of this 'jilly-fluke' that the zailors claimed to have encountered before. I have taken some of these abandoned zailors into my own vessel, and will direct them to you if you wish to question them further. What they claim is too strange to be believed, but does speak to some hazard of the zee of which you ought to be made aware...

#

[This is the End. If you wish to try for a less all-consuming ending, go back to Chapter 1 and begin again.]

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Virulent Transcript](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464982) by [fadeverb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb)




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